The resignation of Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has added to the pressures on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he struggles to govern his country, but has thrown open a debate on just how far ministers in a parliamentary democracy can go in their dealings with the bureaucracy. Mr Raab had to quit after an official enquiry found he was guilty of an “abuse or misuse of power” and of intimidating and insulting civil servants.
He was accused of belittling his staff, on occasion calling them “utterly useless” and “woeful”, and of causing stress and anxiety which forced some of those who worked with him to take sick leave. In his response to the findings of the enquiry, conducted by a well-regarded employment barrister, Mr Raab said the threshold for bullying was too low. He claimed the accusations against him were Kafkaesque, and an attempt by a small number of officials “to target ministers who negotiate robustly on behalf of the country, pursue bold reforms and persevere in holding civil servants to account.” In an interview to the BBC, Mr Raab said: “What you’ve got is the risk here of a very small minority of very activist civil servants, with a passive-aggressive culture of the civil service, who don’t like some of the reforms, whether it’s Brexit, whether it’s parole reform, whether it’s human rights reform, effectively trying to block government. That’s not on, that’s not democratic.”
In the wake of the allegations, many in the Conservative establishment had suggested that the civil servants were “whining”, and that their unions had deliberately targeted the minister. The FDA Union, which represents civil servants and public service professionals, said the issues raised by its members were not confined to one minister, but that several members of Mr Sunak’s cabinet were guilty of crossing the line in their dealings with officials. Rejecting suggestions that its members were whining or that they were “snowflakes”, the union has sought a wider enquiry into ministerial bullying.
Mr Sunak is clearly not prepared to give in, having reluctantly accepted Mr Raab’s resignation even as some of his fellow Tories urged him not to do so arguing that there was little accountability in the system for civil servants who were incompetent or failed to deliver on government policy.
While it is too early to tell how Britons have reacted to the developments, public opinion seems to be getting moulded by the country’s newspapers which appeared largely sympathetic to Mr Raab. One of them asked in its headline, “Was this the day Britain became ungovernable?” while another said “Forced out for wanting best for Britain”. The Conservatives have not had a happy run with bureaucrats, a fact emphasised by former Prime Minister David Cameron when he had referred to them as “enemies of enterprise”, and argued that the civil service was both bloated and inefficient. For their part, civil servants are unhappy with the pay rises announced by the Sunak government and are said to be considering a strike to press their demands