Timid Rishi Sunak should take control of his party and suspend Dominic Raab until the ongoing bullying investigation is over, writes Euan McColm.
At that point in what passes for my career, it was my dream job.
On the day before I started, I was as excited as a child on Christmas Eve. Within a couple of weeks, I’d begun to dread going into the office.
The problem wasn’t the work: that was interesting and challenging and I was good at it. The problem was my immediate boss – a horrible little bully of a man, an inadequate human being – who, when he wasn’t picking on members of staff, was sharing with the office his views on gay people and members of ethnic minorities. You can, I’m sure, imagine.
And how did we all react? We took it, of course, because that’s what you did. You didn’t raise formal complaints. You went to the pub together and consoled each other, and you looked for new jobs.
Thank goodness things have begun to change in the workplace, and employees feel more confident about calling out unacceptable behaviour from those in positions of authority.
Any decent organisation has procedures in place to protect workers from bullying, and to ensure that anyone accused of such behaviour gets a fair hearing.
But we can only have faith in these processes if we may be certain that the high heid yins are completely impartial. If those at the top appear to be siding with an individual accused of bullying, then faith in a just resolution is difficult to muster.
Sunak should have taken control by suspending Raab
On Wednesday, during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, Rishi Sunak sat beside his deputy, Dominic Raab – a man currently being investigated over, at last count, 24 separate allegations that he bullied staff. Some civil servants have spoken about feeling suicidally depressed after working for the deputy PM.
Sunak’s explanation for his failure to take action over Raab, despite repeated warnings that his alleged behaviour had led to a string of complaints, is that a formal investigation is under way, and must be allowed to run its course. (Sunak, we know, is a huge fan of formal investigations, which is why it took him a fortnight to sack Tory Party chair Nadhim Zahawi over the penalty he received from HMRC when he was chancellor.)
Shouldn’t Raab be suspended from his ministerial duties while this process takes place?
Let’s imagine Sunak isn’t a pitifully weak leader, frightened of taking on senior colleagues in case they turn on him, and agree that, OK, he should wait for the outcome of this latest investigation. Shouldn’t Raab be suspended from his ministerial duties while this process takes place?
Should he really be sitting shoulder to shoulder with the PM while members of the civil service allege that this behaviour led to them feeling suicidal?
Bullies are despicable people. But even worse are those cowards who could – but don’t – step in to stop them.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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