Raab's furious exit offers little respite to mandarins

Bullying report forced the deputy prime minister's hand, but tensions between the government and civil servants are high

- Toby Helm and Michael Savage

If there is one impression that Rishi Sunak wants to convey about his premiership, after the chaotic Boris Johnson years and the wild 49 days of Liz Truss, it is one of calm competence.

So it was that the prime minister took a full day to study the report on bullying allegations against his deputy, written by Adam Tolley KC, before picking up the phone to Dominic Raab last Friday morning. Sunak had promised on his first day in office to lead a government of "integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level", so any bullying claims made by civil servants against Raab, if upheld, could not be tolerated.

But the PM also knew he owed Raab, a close ally who had stuck his neck out to support Sunak's leadership campaign, a favour or two. And he was worried about allowing the civil service - full of liberal remainer lefties, in the eyes of many Tory MPs too obvious a victory over a pro-Brexit minister and government.

So the prime minister chose not to sack him directly. It was left to Raab, who had previously agreed to go if Tolley found against him, to read the writing on the wall. He duly did and quit. But if Sunak's aim had been to contain any sense of crisis as far as possible, what followed had precisely the opposite effect. On cue, and in reaction to Raab's resignation, the rightwing press declared the nation to be in a fullblown crisis of governance, in which a woke civil service was calling the shots, thanks to a PM who had failed to stand up to the mandarins.