Dominic Raab refuses to rule out cabinet return - 'I'll take each day as it comes'

Dominic Raab was refusing to rule out a return to the cabinet just hours after he resigned over bullying allegations.

On Friday morning, Raab quit as deputy prime minister and justice secretary after an investigation into bullying accusations found he acted in an intimidating and aggressive way with officials in behaviour that could have amounted to bullying.

By Friday night, in a newspaper interview at a pub in his Esher and Walton constituency, Raab was not ruling out a return to government.

In the interview, published today in the Mail on Sunday, Raab was asked if he had been offered a way back to Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, with him leaving open the prospect of a return by saying: “I’ll take each day as it comes.”

Raab is an ally of Sunak, having backed him through the entire party leadership campaign which he lost to Liz Truss in the summer, before Sunak eventually became PM in October after Truss's disastrous spell as leader.

And fellow Sunak ally Oliver Dowden, Raab's replacement as deputy PM, hasn’t rejected a potential return either.

Watch: Dominic Raab in profile

Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, Dowden said: “I think Dom has a huge amount that he has offered this country in the past. Clearly, decisions about who is in the cabinet or not are purely the preserve of the prime minister.”

Raab has made it known he feels hard done by following the probe into his conduct.

Senior lawyer Adam Tolley led a five-month investigation into eight formal complaints about Raab’s conduct as Brexit secretary and foreign secretary, as well as in his most recent tenure leading the Ministry of Justice.

Tolley concluded Raab engaged in an “abuse or misuse of power” that “undermines or humiliates” while he was foreign secretary.

Raab’s conduct in the department had a “significant adverse effect” on one colleague and he was also found to have been intimidating to staff by criticising “utterly useless” and “woeful” work while justice secretary.

Though he stopped short of describing the conduct as bullying, Tolley’s findings were consistent with what he said would amount to the offence under the Ministerial Code, which “sets out the standards of conduct expected of ministers and how they discharge their duties”.

Raab said he was “sorry for any unintended stress or offence that any officials felt” but also claimed the inquiry had set a “low” threshold for bullying, and that such a move would create a “dangerous precedent” for judging ministerial behaviour.

He has suggested he was targeted by politically motivated civil servants and told the Mail: “A vast majority were faithful, professional, loyal, excellent, behaved with all the professionalism that you'd expect. But I didn't take no for an answer.

“Adam Tolley found that I'd never once lost my temper with anyone, I'd never shouted at anyone, I’d never sworn at anyone [but] I think it was my persistence and perseverance which ultimately precipitated these claims.”

Dowden suggested the system for dealing with bullying complaints against ministers needs to be made “fairer” following Raab’s resignation.

Read more: Dominic Raab: 3 times Tory ministers have been accused of bullying in the past 4 years

“In the end, senior civil servants and senior ministers are united in the goal of serving the British people,” he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. “I do think that out of the report there is a need to look at our processes around that.”

Opposition campaigners in Raab's constituency, meanwhile, are seeking to remove him as an MP.

Raab has a majority of just 2,743 from the 2019 general election, and the Liberal Democrats, his closest rivals, are calling for a by-election.

Leader Sir Ed Davey told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “If he’s not prepared to [resign and face a by-election] to enable his constituents in Esher and Walton to have the MP they deserve, I think the government should withdraw the whip from him, otherwise they’re sending a message that bullying is somehow OK in the Conservative Party.”