Dominic Raab, who quit as the UK’s deputy prime minister on Friday, is both the victim, and the beneficiary, of his unusual industry. He is a beneficiary because, long before his ministerial career was brought to an end by allegations of bullying, his administrative record would surely have halted it elsewhere. Raab attributed the reaction to him from civil servants to the “pace, standards and challenge” he brought to the role, but his ministerial career is one lacking in achievement. At the time of his second appointment to the role of justice secretary, he had nothing on his CV to recommend he be given another ministerial job.
Yet if his chosen career were anything other than that of a politician, he would surely not have lost his job as justice secretary in the manner he did. Being found by an independent report to have, on occasion, interrupted people by “extending his hand directly out towards another person’s face” is, by any standard, unnecessarily rude. But in any normal workplace, a quiet word in the handraiser’s ear and a gentle apology would surely suffice.
Raab is not the first politician to be dogged by rumours about his conduct. Labour’s last prime minister, Gordon Brown, was accused of throwing pens and even a stapler at staff. In April 2009, Bloomberg reported that one aide had been warned to beware of “flying Nokias”. The then prime minister’s spokesperson described Bloomberg’s report as “the sort of unsubstantiated, unsourced nonsense that you would expect to read in Sunday newspapers, not on the supposedly respectable financial wire services”. The difference, of course, is that some of the allegations against Raab were upheld by an independent KC.