Raab dismissed bullying warnings from Christ’s master

Christ’s Master and ex-civil servant, Simon McDonald, raised behavioural concerns with Dominic Raab ‘more than once’ when serving under him

McDonald's revelations came after Raab resigned on Friday (21/04)Wikimedia Commons/Simon McDonald

by Romilly Norfolk

This article is 1 year old

Tuesday April 25 2023, 9:22am

Simon McDonald, the master of Christ’s College and former diplomat, criticised Dominic Raab’s behavioural conduct in an interview with the BBC last weekend (22/04).

In the interview, McDonald described Raab as a “tough taskmaster” whose “methods did not help him achieve what he wanted to do” and that his “behaviour was making his professional life more difficult”.

McDonald’s revelations followed the deputy prime minister and justice secretary's resignation, after an independent investigation found him guilty of bullying behaviour.

McDonald worked as a diplomat for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2020. Over that time he served in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Cabinet Office and became Permanent Under-Secretary in the FCO and Head of the Diplomatic Service in 2015. It was there that McDonald served under Raab when the former Deputy PM was Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs.

McDonald said he raised behavioural concerns with Dominic Raab “more than once”, but that Raab was not willing to listen and “disputed” the claims.

Union to host two heads of state this Easter

However, McDonald felt that labelling the behaviour as bullying “would have been too aggressive”. Only working in the foreign office for Raab’s first year before retiring, McDonald acknowledged that Raab’s behaviour “had not reached that stage” to call it bullying.

Dominic Raab resigned from his Cabinet positions on Friday (21/04). The investigation which led to his resignation looked at Raab’s conduct over his time as Brexit secretary under Theresa May and justice and foreign secretary under Boris Johnson, before finding him to have demonstrated bullying behaviour in the latter two roles. The former deputy PM was described in the report as having acted in an “intimidating” and “aggressive” way towards officials.

Despite resigning, Raab spoke out against the report, calling the findings “flawed” and claiming that the inquiry “set a dangerous precedent”. Whilst the former deputy PM blamed “activist civil servants” for his downfall, Christ’s Master Simon McDonald has publicly underlined that “the issue is a minister’s behaviour”.

Support Varsity

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding and we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too!

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as £1, to help with our running costs. Many thanks, we hope you can help!