For Dominic Raab, nothing so became him in office as the leaving of it. He resigned from his roles as justice secretary, lord chancellor and deputy prime minister after being judged to have broken the ministerial code for bullying civil servants. This was the finding reached in rather more lawyerly language by Adam Tolley KC. Over three months of interviews with 66 people, he examined complaints made during Mr Raab’s span as foreign secretary, justice secretary and Brexit secretary before delivering a damning verdict.
Despite being found to have acted in an “intimidating”, “insulting” and “aggressive” way with officials, Mr Raab suggested he was the real victim of a “Kafkaesque saga” in which he had faced an inquisition. His ungracious resignation letter, written in an apparent fit of pique, played into Brexiters’ permanent sense that their Gulliver was being tied down by Lilliputians in the civil service. In this alternative world, voters are disillusioned because the government is being constrained by people who have not been elected.
