When is a bully not a bully?

The prime minister's recent dismissal of the findings of an investigation into accusations that Priti Patel had been guilty of breaking the ministerial code by her mistreatment of her civil servants has revealed yet again the pernicious culture of cronyism that lies not only at the heart of British governments in general, but of this government in particular. 

The investigation was supposed to be independent, but we have learnt that Johnson attempted to persuade Sir Alex Allan to water down his conclusions. Having failed in that, he simply rejected the report and publicly stated that Ms Patel was not guilty of bullying and, in any event, she had apologised. It is typical of Johnson that he either did not see, or did not care about, the contradictions inherent in these assertions, i.e. that if she had done nothing wrong, why did she apologise? It is unsurprising that Sir Alex chose to resign.

Ms Patel's apologists have pointed out that she is doing a very important job - as though we needed to be told that - but that utterly fails as a defence for bad behaviour. They have also pointed out that the report states that Ms Patel did not receive the service she might expect from her civil servants - one Tory stated that there were faults "on both sides". A journalist actually asked how a woman little over 5' tall could possibly be a bully when dealing with mostly male civil servants. Such rationalisations are either disingenuous, or astonishingly ignorant of the dynamics of the boss/staff relationship. 

The first point is that in the Home Office, Ms Patel is the boss and the civil servants are her underlings; her height and gender are irrelevant to the fact that she is the one with the status and authority. The job of civil servants is to implement the law and government policy. This is true of all civil servants from those at the top in Whitehall to the junior levels that I worked in for 28 years as an executive officer in DHSS/DSS/DWP local offices. Civil servants have little discretion about what they do; to put it bluntly, they have to perform their job as instructed.

As for the suggestion that there were faults on both sides: the boss and her staff do not represent "two sides", which implies a conflict between two equal parties. One is in a position of power and authority over the other. If, as is claimed, civil servants were failing to provide the service Ms Patel required, there are well-established procedures to address the problem.

I was a trade union rep in the civil service for 24 years and while I wasn't involved in representing any mandarins, the procedures my members were subject to were the same as those covering top civil servants. There have been some hints there was an element of sabotage by senior civil servants possibly with an element of racism as to why they weren't (allegedly) doing their job properly. If this were true, then the appropriate response would be to have disciplinary action instigated against the alleged offenders. If the failings were the result of staff not being able to do the job required, then inefficiency proceedings should have been initiated. Those would be the appropriate ways to manage problems with staff performance. The entirely wrong response involves shouting, abuse and swearing. 

Johnson's dismissal of Sir Alex's conclusions, after unsuccessfully trying to influence his investigation, is entirely typical of a man whose own behaviour in both his political and his private life indicates that personal integrity is an utterly alien concept to him. His uncritical acceptance of Dominic Cummings' feeble excuses for breaking the first lockdown constitutes another example of his determination to stand by his mates, no matter what the consequences, which in Cummings's case included damage to the public's compliance with COVID-19 restrictions. The police reported that when questioned about breaking lockdown, many people justified their actions by mentioning Cummings.

Ms Patel's failure to ensure that appropriate disciplinary or inefficiency procedures were used to deal with the problems she claims to have had with staff demonstrates that she has few managerial skills, if any. Bullying is an abuse of a position of authority or power over another, leaving the victim powerless to defend him- or herself, especially as the minister is not a civil servant and is therefore not covered by the internal complaints procedures that do exist in the civil service. This also highlights the utter nonsense of the 'faults on both sides' argument: in vertical hierarchies, there are people with power and their underlings - hardly a battle of equals.

The 'two sides' argument also completely ignores the potential damage that bullying can do to the mental health and well-being of the victim. It is wholly unacceptable to say that bullying is a 'rite of passage' or a fact of life in the world of work, and that you should be a man and just take it on the chin. Recent research on the impact of bullying on both the mental and physical health of victims has demonstrated potentially serious consequences, both in the short-term and the long-term. 

The only protection for victims of ministerial bullying has been the ministerial code, and Johnson's dismissal of the findings will have sent the message to staff that they have no effective defence against overbearing ministers. This whole episode demonstrates that the prime minister is not the right person to adjudicate upon ministerial code enquiries, especially not the brazenly cronyist Johnson; this all leaves the code now fatally undermined.

Ms Patel has form; this is the second time she has been found guilty of breaching the code. Will it be three strikes and she's out? I wouldn't bank on it.

• When is a bully not a bully? When the prime minister is your pal.