Quintin Jardine's blog

I’m crying quietly into my cereal for those poor people who were bullied by Dominic Raab.

For the record, I spent nearly all of the 1970s in the Civil Service, as a press officer. We worked closely with Ministers, including Willie Ross, who had a fiery reputation but was actually a fine man. I never met one who could have been described even remotely as a bully.

The Civil Service itself, that was another matter. My unit was led by a man who was a bully of the first order. He was not alone. At the top levels there were tales of phones being thrown out of windows. I’m sure things have improved since then, but even now if the benchmark by which Raab was judged was applied across the board within the Service itself, I am sure there would be more than a few heads rolling along Whitehall.