Farewell, Raab the ridiculous: a bully to the last

Raab had five months to come up with some kind of dignified response to being branded a bully, and this was the best he could do?

“The British people will pay.” Dominic Raab had five months to come up with some kind of dignified response to be deployed at the moment when he was confirmed to have bullied staff in multiple government departments, to the surprise of absolutely no one. And that was the best he could do.

“The British people will pay.” It could hardly be more fitting, for a man protesting his innocence of the charge of bullying, that you have to read the headline on his absurd, self-serving op-ed about himself several times before you realise that what he means is that the British people will suffer because they no longer have a man of Dominic Raab’s gifts governing them. And not, though it would make a lot more sense, that Dominic Raab is threatening the entire country with revenge.

For the avoidance of all doubt, Raab has not been wronged. Five months’ worth of investigation, and – yet again – great public expense, have concluded the inescapable and overwhelmingly obvious opposite: that it is he who is the wrong ’un.

It’s a dark and depressing tale, with staff talking of having had “their lives ruined” through Raab’s “coercive behaviour” – but it did at least have a little levity at the end.

Denying something while simultaneously doing the thing you are denying is a very old comedic device, but it’s a classic for a reason. And Raab’s I’m-definitely-not-a-nasty-piece-of-work resignation letter is right up there with that bit in The Simpsons where Homer sits on the sofa pondering the mystery of his own obesity while slowly making his way through a 24-pack of doughnuts.

That an eminent barrister has given up a measurable chunk of his entire career to investigate whether Raab is a bully – the kind of thing that a toddler could manage just from one glance at a still photograph – has, in Raab’s opinion and absolutely no one else’s, set a “dangerous precedent”.

The problem – and this is a problem for the nation, if not the world; Raab is just generously highlighting it – is that now that Raab has been found to be a bully, it means that, in his words, a “dangerous precedent” has been established by “setting the threshold for bullying so low”.

Until a few hours ago, Raab, inexplicably, was the justice minister, and in many ways it’s a shame that this most important of government departments will now be denied that kind of maverick thinking.

Raab did manage to complete a two-year traineeship at the corporate law firm Linklaters, an achievement that is regularly mistaken in the public commentary for his being in some way a successful lawyer, which has never been the case.

And that, if anything, is the real tragedy here. It’s that he missed his calling, which is so clearly to the criminal bar. One wonders if, say, Harold Shipman would ever have served a custodial sentence at all if defending barrister Raab had been around to warn the judge that he risked setting the threshold for the mass murder of pensioners “so low”.

And, as an added flourish, that “the British people will pay the price”.

Armed with this kind of epistemological weapon of mass destruction, there is frankly nothing you can’t do. If, having been so very obviously found out, you can turn around and aggressively tell the people doing the finding out that not only have you done nothing wrong, but they are putting society at risk, then do any basic behavioural standards apply to you at all?

The problem, Raab went on to explain, is that he just cared too much. “I am genuinely sorry for any unintended stress or offence that any officials felt, as a result of the pace, standards and challenge that I brought to the Ministry of Justice,” he explained.

Because that’s really the problem, isn’t it. That Raab was too demanding. That his standards were so high. That his long track record of success in all of the government departments he was very quickly sacked from before being moved on elsewhere was just too much for his underlings to handle.

The Whitehall machine, the establishment, the blob, they just couldn’t keep up with the guy who will for ever be best known for trying to evacuate Kabul while being unable to evacuate himself from his hotel in Crete, before offering in mitigation the fact that the “sea was closed” and then accidentally filling up the planes with dogs instead of people.

It’s hard to know if this is the end of the road for Raab. Suella Braverman resigned for having broken the ministerial code, and then Rishi Sunak reappointed her to the same job four days later. She really did stand there in the House of Commons and say the words: “That is why I did the right thing and resigned as home secretary!” while simultaneously being the home secretary, so there’s no reason to think the rabbit hole doesn’t go deeper.

For most people, writing an angry letter in which you congratulate yourself for having “never sworn or shouted at anyone, or thrown anything at anyone” should mark the end of a career in public service that was never dignified to begin with.

Mainly, it’s a nervous time for the British people, who are – at least as far as Raab is concerned – already “paying the price” by not being governed by him. Without Raab’s “high standards” keeping everyone on their toes, there’s a very real danger that everything could just fall apart.

“The British people will pay.” Raab thinks we haven’t already suffered enough.