It was a full 24 hours before Rishi Sunak picked up the phone to Dominic Raab after both men were handed a 48-page report concluding the deputy prime minister bullied staff with his intimidating and abrasive manner. The inquiry was given to the prime minister on Thursday morning and journalists had been briefed to expect a swift verdict. But Sunak took his time to digest the findings, which some advisers considered were “more equivocal” than expected, according to a Downing Street source. Sunak, who has made a point of following due process, spoke to its author, Adam Tolley, who took him through facts that were not made public, giving more information about particular incidents of bullying.
The prime minister then consulted his independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, for advice on whether the ministerial code had been broken. But by Thursday evening there was still no word from No 10. All the while, Raab was himself also poring over the report and maintaining that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. On Thursday night, his allies were saying they thought he had a chance of keeping his job. One briefed that he was “lawyered up” to fight for it but another disputed that, saying the justice secretary acknowledged it was “entirely within Sunak’s gift” to keep or dismiss him from cabinet. During the long wait, Raab kept himself busy, preparing a 1,000-word defence of his conduct in an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph and penning a fiery resignation letter making its own allegations of unprofessional conduct by the civil service. In his article, he warned the bar had been set so low for bullying that it would set a “dangerous precedent”, giving rise to spurious complaints by civil servants against ministers.
By Friday morning, Sunak was ready to speak to his deputy. They had a private conversation, and shortly afterwards, at 9.48am, Raab unleashed his resignation letter on Twitter, criticising the report and process. Downing Street sources insist that Sunak did not ask for a resignation but that Raab offered and the PM accepted. Just over an hour later, the Telegraph published Raab’s opinion piece, headlined: “The people of Britain will pay the price for this Kafkaesque saga.” By early afternoon, this had been replicated in the Times. With the report still unpublished, Raab had been allowed to air his own side of the story. Two sources said No 10 had originally been preparing to publish the Tolley report at about 2pm, but in the end it was emailed out along with Sunak’s letter to Raab about half an hour after the Telegraph piece appeared. Sunak’s letter was considerably softer than Raab’s: there was barely a word of criticism for his loyal former cabinet minister, and paragraph after paragraph of tributes to his work. Shortly afterwards, Sunak’s official spokesperson gave a briefing in which the prime minister appeared to give only a lukewarm endorsement of the Tolley report, saying it had done “important work”. He declined to condemn Raab’s behaviour outright, giving only a general criticism of bullying, and would not spell out whether Sunak believed his deputy had broken the ministerial code. One Downing Street source said there was no criticism of the Tolley report, but some of the complaints about Raab “interrupting and so on” were not well-founded alongside the bullying allegations that were upheld. Neither would they confirm that Sunak had asked Raab to resign, saying only he thought it right that the deputy prime minister had done so.
In his letter to Raab, Sunak also acknowledged some criticisms over the way the complaints had been handled, and his spokesperson suggested there would be a review of the “timeliness” of when bullying allegations can be brought. Sunak’s reluctance to strongly criticise Raab came against a backdrop of unhappiness among Conservative MPs about the manner of the deputy prime minister’s departure. While Raab has no huge following within his party, many were upset by the idea that complaints from anonymous civil servants have brought down a deputy PM and sought to portray the allegations as symptomatic of a leftwing plot against one of their own. Joy Morrissey, a Tory MP and former parliamentary aide to Raab, was among them. “Sadly, we now live in a country where the definition of bullying includes telling someone to do their job. Where the slightest upset or annoyance is indulged with endless reports and inquiries,” she said. “Where whining, taking offence and narcissistic victimhood have become the defining characteristics of our times – as the uncomplaining and silent majority look on in disbelief.” Another ally of Raab, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, said he had not managed to read the whole report, but “what’s been cited seems to me the sort of things that I would consider a manager might do”. He added: “I am also not entirely sure about this process by which you can suddenly conjure up complaints from years ago on the day he was due to take prime minister’s questions, which is what happened. It looked altogether like an orchestrated ambush rather than a quasi-judicial procedure.” Other Tory MPs were less sympathetic, including some with experience of Raab’s abrasive style. “Unfortunately, he deserves this,” one MP said, applauding Sunak for taking the right professional decision. With Raab now potentially able to cause trouble for No 10 from the backbenches, alongside some supportive colleagues, time will tell whether for Sunak the decision was the right one politically.