Watching the right’s line take shape around Dominic Raab, the former deputy prime minister and justice secretary, over the weekend was almost beautiful; so coordinated, so graceful, like synchronised swimming. He wasn’t a bully, he was a tough taskmaster, as ministers must be. He wasn’t brought down by his own behaviour, but by the Blob. It wasn’t even about one man; nobody is safe from the woke army, not even Suella Braverman, who is surely next in the Blob’s sights, even though she seems so … nice? (This bit of the argument was underdeveloped.)
Despite the fact that this is definitely not about Raab the man – this is a war, not a duel – Raab is nevertheless at the centre of the action, trenchantly making his case, a middle-aged action hero in the Liam Neeson tradition, the only man who will take on the vast invisible forces of liberals to save his precious constitution.
This lonesome soldier, bloodied but unbowed, would like to remind you, ladies and gentlemen: “Mr Tolley concluded that I had not once, in four and a half years, sworn or shouted at anyone, let alone thrown anything or otherwise physically intimidated anyone.”
I have to say, I find the wording strange: he makes it sound like four and a half years is a really long time to go without shouting, swearing, throwing things or otherwise physically intimidating anyone. Surely, if you think those behaviours are out of place in a professional environment, the right amount of time to go without exhibiting them would be your entire career.
The threshold for bullying is so low as to be dangerous, he contends in his resignation letter. It will encourage spurious complaints from people whose real agenda is to resist change. A brave man who has never once, in six months, set fire to anything or ripped off his shirt and instructed underlings to smell his rage has seen his brilliant agenda for change – which was way too brilliant for anyone to know what it was – thwarted. Where will the wokerati draw the line? “How much louder and more shrill can they get?” wondered a very quiet and not-at-all-shrill Daniel Johnson in the Daily Mail.
Pause for a second, because if we really do have to do this, if it is going to be one long Kulturkampf from now until the general election, or until democracy has been suspended, I would ideally like some sense of who is marching under which flag.
The wokerati is easy – that is you. Maybe you are not even a regular Guardian reader; maybe you came here looking for a tofu recipe. Too late, sucker.
But you are not in charge of resisting change; yours is the cancellation department. You are actually, no offence, terrible at it. All the people you cancel end up with a column in the Daily Telegraph and a slot on GB News. It might be because you often cancel them wordlessly, the only sign that it happened being that they get a Sunday Times column to describe how painful it was.
The Blob is absolutely a thing that exists – why else would it be capitalised? – and the poor reasonable people can’t land a blow on it. It’s like trying to punch seaweed. This, if I have read its genealogy right from Michael Gove’s coinage at the start of the coalition government, is any public servant who disagrees with any governing politician. After 13 years of stagnant or declining wages and hapless, shortsighted decisions, this is now all public servants. I am going to stick my neck out and say all Blob members are woke, but not everyone who is woke is part of the Blob. Some of us don’t even have real jobs.
Snowflakes, on paper, are people who lack the resilience to be bullied and need regular mental health days, but, in practice, they are all the young people. Young, let’s say, junior doctors who read the Guardian are this army’s elite squad, its SAS; if they weren’t so busy with their 100-hour weeks, God knows what kind of trouble this country would be in. Gary Lineker is a sole trader, a kind of Joan of Arc figure. Spare a thought for the PC brigade, who were decommissioned without anyone even explaining what they (we) did wrong.
OK, then. Let battle commence.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
