Firm decisive inaction

Tweet

 

Just as I was reading the headlines about Raab being all lawyered up and determined to “fight to the death” to keep his job, up pops the headline about his resignation. Given the contradiction between this and what his ‘friends and allies’ were saying last night, many will have assumed that this was a result of a conversation with the PM, who told him that if he didn’t jump, he’d be pushed, and in normal times with a normal government, that might be a reasonable conclusion. However, some journalists are reporting that that was not the case at all, and that Sunak didn’t tell him he had to go. It seems that Sunak was still busy mulling over the content of a report for which he had had months to prepare, and to which he had promised a rapid response, trying to decide which was the least worst option: sacking a close ally likely to alienate the swivel-eyed tendency in the Tory Party, or keeping him on which was likely to alienate just about everyone else, including those at the top of the Civil Service charged with implementing government policy. There is one thing for which we should be grateful to Raab: he has enabled Sunak to show us just what firm decisive inaction looks like.