If being demanding makes Dominic Raab a ‘bully’, our society is in trouble

Is Dominic Raab really a bully? I have met the Deputy Prime Minister just the once and he didn’t bite my head off, or even try to bite me, so maybe I should count myself lucky. According to one of his many detractors, Raab is “a twitching sociopath with all the empathy of a wasp”.

My first impression was that the minister was courteous, if not quite relaxed enough to be charming, and there was definitely a coolness there, a glint of steel. Personally, I rather like that aloofness in someone tasked with running our country. It does, of course, offend against the spirit of the age which prefers “be kind” to “be efficient” and where “pick your battles” and “bite the bullet” are now amusingly considered to be “violent idioms” rather than sound, metaphorical advice.

Dozens of officials are believed to be involved in eight formal complaints of bullying, which Raab denies, with Adam Tolly KC leading an investigation into the Justice Secretary’s behaviour. Due process doesn’t seem to count for much, however, when left-leaning civil servants scent another Tory scalp. Judging by the gush of tearful anonymous briefings splashed over the papers, and hourly calls on the Prime Minister to sack him, the verdict is already in: there’s no smoke without ire.

Admittedly, Raab doesn’t sound like the cuddliest boss, nor is he always the most emotionally intelligent politician. He came up with one of the worst excuses in recent political history when, as foreign secretary, he decided to remain on holiday during the shambolic evacuation of Kabul. Accusations he had been paddleboarding at the time were nonsense, Raab said, because “the sea was closed”.

Still, in all fairness (anyone remember fairness? It used to be a thing in the olden days), when you read the charge sheet against him it does seem very thin. Take that episode when the minister, during a tense meeting with Ministry of Justice staff, allegedly opened his Pret salad and threw three cherry tomatoes into a bag “making a noise”. Traumatic for all concerned, obviously. If, that is, you are so thin-skinned you think a trio of teeny tomatoes plopping with a slight squelch onto brown paper are the Whitehall equivalent of a roadside bomb in Helmand Province.

That’s not all. As one civil servant complained: “With junior staff..he [Raab] could be very icy, he’d be given a piece of paper and there would be a silence, and he’d say ‘this isn’t good enough’. The official would be stammering ‘er, er’ and he’d be saying ‘this isn’t right, it’s not good enough, I can’t accept this’. You don’t have to be physically aggressive for people to be scared.”

What is this, the reception class or a major department of state? Are civil servants now such delicate, wilting nasturtiums that they think a demanding boss – one who prefers things to be done properly and on time – is abusive? If expecting briefing documents to be in the required form and properly checked, relevant background papers to be on hand, saying “This isn’t good enough” (because it really isn’t) and generally not conducting oneself with the mine-host bonhomie of Michael McIntyre makes you a bully, then our society is in trouble. Suffering fools gladly should not be among the qualifications for holding high office or any other important job.

Last week, Susanna Reid, the superb presenter of  ITV’s Good Morning Britain, was reported to have lost her rag with producers, complaining about a “string” of embarrassing blunders, including inaccuracies which were allowed to appear on screen. One foreign correspondent had his surname spelt incorrectly; on another occasion, the wrong date appeared. Presumably, civil servants would see Reid’s rebuke to staff as unkind or bullying. I see a broadcaster who holds herself to the highest possible standards on air and expects other people not to let her down or make the show look stupid. Striving to get things right is about showing respect to your audience.

We should, of course, be wary of the “Well, it didn’t do me any harm” school of workplace nostalgia. The office of the past could often be a brutal and demeaning place. My formative years in journalism were mainly spent being yelled at by small, bald Scotsmen with a temperament that owed more to Krakatoa than Kircaldy. Being bawled out for making stupid errors does tend to have the salutary effect of reducing the number of stupid errors you make. Thirty years on, I am grateful to my stern taskmasters – bullies in today’s money – for making me the raging perfectionist I am today.

This is not to say that Dominic Raab is innocent. He may yet be judged to be a weak man who gets off on humiliating subordinates, although I doubt it. This feels like a political hit-job to me. We have seen it before when Conservative ministers have told the Whitehall machine to do what the electorate voted for. Priti Patel was obstructed by most of her permanent staff at the Home Office before being accused (and found guilty) of bullying. Allies of Ms Patel said civil servants tried to hold up plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda because they “hate the policy”.  I don’t rate that particular policy myself, but I certainly don’t believe that the rarefied sensibilities of mandarins, most of them cocooned from the consequences of mass immigration, should be allowed to over-rule the clear will of the people.

We are not very far from the point where the definition of “bullying”  is “minister trying to enact Conservative values gets a bit cross when prevented from doing so”. Tories need no lectures from the “Be Kind” brigade who would gladly see 65,000 migrants cross the Channel this year, many of them adult males claiming to be children. That’s not kind, it’s dangerous and deluded.

The PM said on Tuesday that he will sack Dominic Raab if the investigation concludes that he did bully people. To put further pressure on him, the media has been briefed that Ministry of Justice officials fear there will be “mass resignations” if Dominic Raab remains as Justice Secretary after the bullying inquiry is completed.

Brilliant news. They all work from home anyway so they won’t be missed. The Government cannot capitulate and allow a fifth column within the civil service to sabotage its policies while plotting to bring down ministers who insist on them doing their job. Raab may be a bit full of himself, he may not even be very likeable, but that is not sufficient reason to make him a non-Dom.

Why, you could even claim he’s a victim of bullying.