The PM has ‘full confidence’ in his foreign secretary – but that doesn’t mean accountability is dead

People say social media encourages overheated and polarised rhetoric. Indeed, “social warming” is the thesis of a book by Charles Arthur, a former colleague of ours at The Independent. But talk radio has been just as capable of intemperate opinionising since long before the internet, and I took part in a discussion this week that illustrated this well.

The assertion being debated was that political accountability is a thing of the past, and that ministers no longer resign when they have done something wrong as they did in the Good Old Days, when “honourable” was an adjective applied to MPs, not an empty form of address.

Exhibit A held up for public ridicule was Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary who was accused of being useless and presiding over the failure of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The foreign secretary did not sound comfortable in a round of interviews this morning, which seemed to have a defensive purpose in explaining why some of the problems of the evacuation were the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.

In the short term, the job was done, and the prime minister’s spokesperson said that Boris Johnson had “full confidence” in Raab. I doubt that Raab will be moved in the next reshuffle unless other things go wrong. Being on a beach during an international crisis looked bad, but it is hardly the worst thing a minister has done.

Nor does it mean, of course, that political accountability is dead. The idea that ministers used to resign with honour but now cling to office despite being bang to rights is refuted by a list of ministerial resignations compiled by Whitehall Monitor. The list includes every resignation outside reshuffles since 1979, and there have already been 13 of them since Johnson has been prime minister.

The most recent cabinet resignation was that of Matt Hancock, a clear example of a minister leaving office because of admitted wrongdoing. Johnson’s critics complained that the prime minister allowed Hancock to resign rather than sacking him, but for accountability purposes the required result was achieved.

It’s also untrue that ministers used to resign on grounds of principled disagreement but now keep quiet for the sake of the salary, the ministerial car and the prospect of advancement. The prime minister’s own brother, Jo Johnson, resigned because he didn’t agree with the way in which the country was heading towards the EU exit. Amber Rudd resigned as work and pensions secretary a couple of days later. Douglas Ross, now leader of the Scottish Conservatives, resigned as a junior Scotland Office minister because he thought Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s adviser, should have been sacked some months before he was.

Indeed, Boris Johnson himself had resigned “on principle” as foreign secretary in Theresa May’s government because he disagreed with the Chequers plan to keep the UK temporarily in the EU customs union. May suffered more resignations per month than most prime ministers, but this reflected greater ideological turmoil rather than more accountability.

You can see why Johnson might have acquired a reputation for defying the principle of accountability. He refused to sack Cummings until it was too late; he overruled the independent adviser on ministerial standards to insist that Priti Patel was not guilty of bullying; and Gavin Williamson is still education secretary.

And it might be argued that these things were done differently in the past. The cases that are always mentioned are Lord Carrington and Estelle Morris. Carrington resigned as foreign secretary because he felt someone should take responsibility for the “humiliating affront” of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands (and it couldn’t have been Margaret Thatcher, whose fault it really was). Carrington re-entered the story in 2018, when, on hearing that Boris Johnson had quit his own former post, the old man, now 99, raised a fist “like a football fan” and died.

Morris resigned as education secretary in Tony Blair’s government in 2002, because she felt she was not “as effective as I should be”, winning much praise for her honesty – although her resignation letter was drafted for her by Alastair Campbell, the prime minister’s press secretary, and she had in any case promised to resign if literacy and numeracy targets were not met, which they were not.

Carrington and Morris were exceptions rather than rules. It may be that Blair insisted on some resignations that his successors might have resisted: it might have been possible for Peter Mandelson to have survived one or both of his media storms, for instance.

But in the end, accountability comes via public opinion. The reason Hancock had to go is that it would have been disastrous for the government to have kept a law-maker who was a law-breaker. And the reason Raab can stay is that public opinion is largely unmoved.