The charge sheet against Sir Gavin Williamson gets longer by the day – how much longer can he survive, given the damage the bullying row is doing to Rishi Sunak?
If there are more unpleasant allegations, the answer is not long. The prime minister, who promised accountability and integrity on the day he succeeded Liz Truss, may decide enough is enough.
Number 10 says Mr Sunak still has full confidence in Sir Gavin and believes his denials – but that’s risky and many Conservative MPs are questioning whether the damage to the PM is worth the risk.
Downing Street responds to latest Williamson developments – follow politics live
The peak period of vulnerability for the embattled Sir Gavin – yes, Boris Johnson controversially awarded him a knighthood in March – is the hour or so before this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer tormented Mr Sunak with a powerful onslaught on his re-appointment of Suella Braverman as home secretary six days after Ms Truss sacked her for a security breach.
The PM won’t want a repeat of that sort of painful experience at his high noon with the Labour leader this week, especially since his appointment of Sir Gavin was arguably even more reckless than the home secretary’s swift return.
Rishi Sunak believes Sir Gavin Williamson’s account of events on the allegations he faces, No 10 says
Minister ‘suspects’ Gavin Williamson will still be in cabinet role at Christmas after he is accused of telling senior civil servant to ‘slit your throat’
Gavin Williamson accused of telling senior civil servant to ‘slit your throat’
The charge sheet – which the former director of public prosecutions will no doubt read to the jury of public opinion at PMQs – begins with Sir Gavin’s abusive and threatening texts to former chief whip Wendy Morton about not being invited to the Queen’s funeral.
Laid bare in excruciating detail in the Sunday Times, they included the menacing: “Don’t forget I know how this works so don’t puss me about”, “let’s see how many more times you **** us all over”, and “there is a price for everything”.
Then on Monday, the Times reported that a government minister claimed that when Sir Gavin was chief whip, he raised details about her private life in a conversation in an attempt to silence her when she was on the backbenches.
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And now the Guardian reports that a senior civil servant claims Sir Gavin told them to “slit your throat” and “jump out of the window” in a sustained campaign of bullying, in which he “deliberately demeaned and intimidated” them on a regular basis while he was defence secretary.
As chief whip, Sir Gavin revelled in his reputation as a menacing enforcer in the style of Michael Dobbs’ chief whip Francis Urquhart in House of Cards. The real life chief whip even famously kept a tarantula called Cronus on his desk.
After the latest bullying allegation, as Downing Street and fellow ministers struggled to defend Sir Gavin, the most hilarious attempt at backing for him came from the newly-appointed Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride.
“The reality with Cronus is he was much touted but he never actually was released to bite anybody,” he told Kay Burley on Sky News.
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But former Tory cabinet minister Nicky Morgan told a different story in a TV interview: “I had my run-ins with Gavin Williamson when he was Theresa May’s chief whip. None of this surprises me, sadly. This is a story that is going to keep on giving.”
It almost certainly is. And that’s the problem for the prime minister. The consensus among MPs is that he only handed Sir Gavin his comeback as a reward for a political crony who helped him – eventually – win the Tory crown.
Another view among Tory MPs is that Sir Gavin’s post as minister of state in the Cabinet Office, sweetened by the perk of attending cabinet, is effectively a non-job with no departmental responsibilities.
In reality, though, he’s in the Cabinet Office as an enforcer and fixer for the PM. It’s the same job cricket-loving Tory MP Sir Nigel Adams did for Boris Johnson.
And in a further example of cronyism, Sir Nigel has now been nominated for a peerage by Mr Johnson as a reward for batting for his old boss.
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One seemingly preposterous conspiracy theory being put about by allies of Sir Gavin is that the attempts to discredit him are all a plot by friends of the ousted Ms Truss.
The theory goes that it was Sir Jake Berry, Tory chairman under Ms Truss and another close ally of Mr Johnson, who instigated an inquiry inside party HQ into Sir Gavin’s expletive-laden texts to Ms Morton.
However, Ms Morton – one of Ms Truss’s closest allies – has now escalated her bullying complaint, fearing a whitewash by the Conservative Party, it’s claimed.
Ms Morton has referred Sir Gavin to parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. But many in parliament regard the ICGS – set up after the so-called Pest-minster scandal – as useless and toothless.
The ICGS’s latest annual report, published – conveniently – in the period between Ms Truss’s resignation and Mr Sunak becoming Tory leader – revealed that it took an average of 196 days to conclude an investigation.
That’s more than six months. Painfully and inexcusably slow. And talk to any Commons staffers who’ve accused an MP of bullying and they’ll also tell you the process is rigged in favour of the accused, not the accuser, and MPs are judge and jury in the process.
So for Sir Gavin, the bigger threat to his remaining in his Cabinet Office “non-job” than an ICGS investigation is the charge sheet against him getting even longer in the coming days.
And, as a result, there’s the risk of his protector, the prime minister, losing patience with him and calling time on Sir Gavin’s potentially very brief comeback.
