British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry. (AP) LONDON — Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, resigned reluctantly on Friday after it was discovered that he had intimidated government employees, albeit he called the investigation’s conclusions “flawed.”
The investigation report into eight formal complaints that Raab, who was also the justice secretary, had been abusive towards staff members during a previous stint in that office and while serving as Britain’s foreign secretary and Brexit secretary, was delivered to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak the day before Raab’s announcement. Raab was also the justice secretary.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
Raab was judged to have “acted in a way which was intimidating,” was “unreasonably and persistently aggressive,” and “introduced an unwarranted punitive element” to his leadership style, according to attorney Adam Tolley, who conducted the investigation and pointed out that “bullying” was not a legal term.
“His conduct also involved an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates,” Tolley wrote in the 48-page report.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
Raab, 49, denied claims he belittled and demeaned staff and said he “behaved professionally at all times.”He remained defiant in resigning, saying he was “duty-bound” after promising to do so if the bullying complaints were substantiated. He said the inquiry made two findings of bullying against him and dismissed the others.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
He made it clear in his resignation letter that he did not accept the findings, calling them “flawed” and saying the inquiry “set a dangerous precedent” by “setting the threshold for bullying so low.”
In a letter praising much of the work that Raab had done, Sunak said he accepted the resignation “with great sadness.” He also referred to “shortcomings” in the investigation, which he said had “negatively affected everyone involved.”
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
Sunak appointed Oliver Dowden, a senior Cabinet official, as deputy prime minister, and Alex Chalk as justice secretary. Government websites were quickly updated with the replacements and their photos. 
The resignation spared Sunak the difficult task of deciding the fate of his top deputy.If he had fired Raab, he would have faced more criticism for appointing him in the first place despite reportedly being warned about Raab’s behavior; if he had kept him in the job, he would have been blasted for failing to follow through on his promise to restore integrity to the Conservative government.
Prior to Raab’s resignation on Thursday, Sunak’s spokeswoman Max Blain stated that the prime minister still had “full confidence” in his deputy as he read the report and considered if he had broken the ministerial code.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
According to the code of conduct, ministers must respect others and maintain decent and appropriate interactions with their coworkers, civil servants, and staff. It states that bullying, harassment, and discrimination won’t be permitted.
Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Sunak’s decision not to fire Raab allowed his deputy — who was unlikely to go quietly — to criticize the report’s findings, rather than his boss. Instead, Raab hailed Sunak as a “great prime minister” and pledged support from the backbenches of Parliament.
Rutter said Sunak missed an opportunity to send a message about what he expects from his cabinet.
“He could have in a sense done more for that if he’d said, ‘I’m not gonna give you the option of resigning, I am going to sack you because you’ve fallen below the standards I want to set for the way I run my government,’” Rutter said.Sunak’s delay in not acting swiftly, as he had promised, gave his political opponents an opportunity to attack him for dithering.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
“What I think this shows is the continual weakness of the prime minister,” opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer told broadcasters. “He should never have appointed him in the first place, along with other members of the Cabinet that shouldn’t have been appointed, and then he didn’t sack him.
Even today, it’s Raab who resigned rather than the prime minister who acts.”Raab, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 2010, ran unsuccessfully for Conservative Party leader in 2019 before endorsing Boris Johnson. Johnson appointed him deputy prime minister, and when Johnson was hospitalised in April 2020 with Covid-19, he briefly assumed that position.
Raab wrote in his letter that he was “sincerely sorry for any unintended stress or offence that any officials felt” and that he had “not intentionally belittled anyone.”He stated that the investigation found he hadn’t “sworn or shouted at anyone, let alone thrown anything or otherwise physically intimidated anyone.
“The bullying inquiry is the latest ethics headache for Sunak, who vowed to restore order and integrity to government after three years of instability under predecessors Johnson and Liz Truss. Multiple scandals brought Johnson down in summer 2022, and Truss quit in October after six weeks in office when her tax-cutting economic plans sparked mayhem on the financial markets. A parliamentary watchdog announced this week that he was looking into whether Sunak properly disclosed his wife’s interest in a company that stands to benefit from a massive boost to free child care in his administration’s budget.A member of Sunak’s Cabinet, Gavin Williamson, quit in November over bullying claims.
(British deputy prime minister resigns following a bullying inquiry).
In January, Sunak fired Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi for failing to come clean about a multimillion-dollar tax dispute.
Asked later by the BBC if he was a “nightmare” to work for, Raab said that a very small minority of passive-aggressive “activist civil servants” tried to block his reforms and that he got along with thousands of other public employees.
The report noted that Raab had been able to regulate his “abrasiveness” after the investigation was announced.