Rishi Sunak should remove the whip from Dominic Raab to avoid sending the message that “bullying is somehow okay”, the Liberal Democrats have said.
Party leader Sir Ed Davey said the government should take the action – which would force Mr Raab to sit as an independent in the Commons – if he is not willing to quit as an MP.
The report found that Mr Raab “acted in a manner that was intimidating” and “persistently aggressive” and had been “unreasonably and persistently aggressive” in meetings.
Government ‘sending message bullying is okay’
The Liberal Democrats are gunning for Mr Raab’s marginal seat of Esher and Walton and the next election, and have demanded he stand down as an MP and face a by-election.
Sir Ed told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “If he’s not prepared to do that 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 okay in the Conservative Party.”
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Sir Ed claimed his party would be able to win Mr Raab’s seat, where he holds a majority of just 2,743 votes.
The Lib Dems are also targeting “big gains” at Elmbridge Borough Council in Mr Raab’s Surrey constituency in next month’s local elections, he added.
Raab defiant despite quitting
Mr Raab resigned nearly 24 hours after Mr Sunak was presented with the report into his behaviour on Thursday, and before the PM had made a decision on his future.
The former cabinet minister immediately rejected the report’s conclusions, claiming the inquiry was “flawed” and “set a dangerous precedent for the conduct of good government”.
He later accused a small faction of civil servants of coordinating a plot to oust him.
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0:31
Raab on ‘activist civil servants’
PM’s new deputy backs civil servants
Oliver Dowden replaced Mr Raab as deputy prime minister, while Alex Chalk has taken over as justice secretary.
Mr Dowden said Mr Raab was right to resign after two bullying complaints were upheld against him, but he did not suggest his predecessor was treated unfairly during the investigation.
Asked whether Mr Raab was wrong to criticise civil servants, Mr Dowden said: “Well, I didn’t live Dom’s experience.”
The former culture secretary added: “At the height of the COVID crisis, when all of our theatres were locking down, my civil servants worked relentlessly with me to get that £2bn culture recovery fund.
“Civil servants can deliver, but I do not want to see any diminution in the ability of ministers to expect high standards of their officials.”
Mr Dowden confirmed reports the government is considering plans to allow greater power to appoint civil servants.
“We keep all these things under review,” he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday. “I think it’s important we look at civil service appointments on an ongoing basis.”
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9:24
Dominic Raab was ‘failing minister’
Labour: Raab a ‘failing minister’
Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said there was “no problem with being demanding or inquisitorial or pushing the system hard” – but Mr Tolley’s report found Mr Raab was “intimidating” and “aggressive”.
“It’s not just that he was a bullying minister, he was a failing minister – failing to deal with the backlog in the courts, failing to deal with the problems in the criminal justice system – and indeed his failures I think are symptomatic of a failing government,” he said.
Mr Ashworth said it was “right” that Mr Raab resigned but said the report “calls into question Rishi Sunak’s judgement in appointing him”.
The Kremlin has criticised President Joe Biden for adding “fuel to the fire” after giving Ukraine permission to launch US missiles into Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to… continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict.”
Russia‘s Foreign Ministry added that the action by Mr Biden‘s administration would fundamentally alter the nature of the war and trigger “an adequate and tangible” response.
The UK has refused to reveal if it plans to follow suit, for example extending the use of British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles by Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia.
Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey told the House of Commons commenting would “compromise operations and security”, adding that he will speak with the US and Ukrainian defence secretaries on Monday evening.
At the G20 Summit in Brazil, Sir Keir Starmer gave a similar response: “I’m not going to get into operational details because the only winner, if we were to do that, is [Vladimir] Putin, and I’m not prepared to do that.”
For over a year Ukraine has been calling on America changes its policy on the use of long-range missiles.
Donald Trump Jr,the son of president-elect Donald Trump,suggested in a post on X that Mr Biden was risking a third world war “before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives”.
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3:04
The use of tactical missile systems for Ukraine
Hungary: Policy is ‘astonishingly dangerous’
There has been a strong, but mixed, reaction across Europe to America’s change of policy.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said the decision was “astonishingly dangerous” – although the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has a close and often sympathetic relationship with Moscow.
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Slovakia’s leader Robert Fico, who has also fostered a stronger relationship with his Russian counterpart, said it was an “unprecedented escalation of tensions” and “a decision that thwarts hopes for the start of any peace talks”.
But other countries have been more positive.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said: “This decision was very necessary… Russia sees that Ukraine enjoys strong support and that the West’s position is unyielding and determined.”
Meanwhile, Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna was equally positive. He said easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing”, adding: “We have been saying that from the beginning – that no restrictions must be put on the military support [for Ukraine].”
How could Russia respond?
In the past, Russia’s president has mentioned sending weapons to the West’s adversaries to strike Western targets abroad. He didn’t mention any nations specifically, but the assumption was it was a reference to Iran.
Moscow has also recently changed its nuclear doctrine, to allow it in theory to respond with nuclear weapons if the West attacks targets on Russian soil.
So are these threats genuine? Or is it more sabre-rattling?
The calculus in Washington seems to be that this is another bluff from Moscow, following the obliteration of previous red lines without consequence.
The West has supplied missiles, battle tanks and fighter jets to Kyiv, all without invoking the escalation that was threatened.
But could Russia respond in other, more subtle ways, which it doesn’t want to broadcast? Think sabotage, cyber attacks, closer alignment with Iran (and of course North Korea).
So in that sense, it’s not the Kremlin’s public fury the West will be worried about, it’s what happens behind the scenes.
Missiles are ‘not a game changer’
Former British ambassador to Russia Sir Toby Brenton has told Sky News: “Nobody is really expecting this to be a game changer.
“They’re expecting it to make life more difficult for the Russians, slow the Russian advance down, but… from all the stories I’m hearing, there are not actually that many of these missiles available to be used.”
Barely anyone speaks – there is virtual silence apart from the sounds of passing vehicles and the wind whipping through flags and photographs commemorating the dead in a war that started 1,000 days ago when Russia invaded.
What is really striking is the sheer number of people who have died, and this memorial in Kyiv’s Maidan Square represents just some of those who gave their lives defending their country.
Soldiers in camouflage fatigues pause to pay their respects to comrades, civilians stop and stare, heads often bowed.
At the same time, on mobile phones, news alerts announce another missile strike on Ukraine. This time in the port city of Odessa.
More dead, more injured, it never stops here.
As this war grinds on, with Russia making significant gains in the east, it says something about the Ukrainian people’s resolve to keep going.
For months the Ukrainian government has been pleading with the United States and its western partners for permission to use long range weapons to attack deep inside Russia.
These weapons would allow Ukraine to target airfields and bases where drones and missiles are launched against Ukraine, and to attack supply routes and military camps. In effect – to take the fight to Russia.
Time and again civilians and soldiers alike tell me the West and the United States are scared of annoying or provoking Russia. Wrongly or rightly, most believe the West is happy for Ukraine to hold the line but not beat Russia.
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2:25
Ukraine allowed to use US long-range missiles in Russia
News that President Biden, in the twilight of his time in office, has changed his position allowing American missiles to be fired into Russia, has been greeted with euphoria.
Although it’s tempered by his decision to allow them to be used only in the Kursk region of Russia, where North Korean troops are augmenting the Russian military.
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I met Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko in the capital, she heard the news as she arrived back in Ukraine from a trip abroad.
She says the decision has “lifted spirits here” and calls the move “extremely significant” but says it needs to go further.
“As members of parliament we have been echoing the president in every single meeting we have abroad, asking for the permission to strike inside Russia’s territory, what this means is permission to liquidate 16 airbases from which Russia on a daily and nightly bases sends airplanes carrying missiles that are hitting Ukrainian homes, Ukrainian infrastructure, and basically making civilian life impossible in the country,” she told me.
She continued: “Having permission to strike inside of all of Russia would really change things round for the people of Ukraine first and foremost, but also on the battlefield.”
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She told me that despite the war dragging on, the Ukrainian people remain resolute and united.
“The resilience is still there, for us this resilience equals survival, if Ukraine stops fighting there will be no Ukraine, there will be no us as Ukrainians, there will be no housing, we would not be allowed to live under the Ukrainian flag, so the only option here is to make sure that Russia stops fighting and that Russia can never fight again.”
Over the past almost two weeks I have driven from the west to the east of this huge country.
It strikes me that you can barely pass a town or a village cemetery without the blue and gold colours of the Ukrainian flag punctuating the grey skies – marking the graves of the war dead.
A thousand days since the Russian invasion began, soldiers and civilians alike are still dying, but Ukraine is still fighting.
An undersea fibre optic cable between Germany and Finland has stopped working and might have been deliberately cut by an unknown party, according to authorities.
The 729 mile (1,173km) C-Lion1 cable under the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to Rostock went offline just after 2am GMT on Monday.
The outage was reported by Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia.
A physical inspection has not yet been done but the abrupt nature suggests it was completely severed by an outside force, said chief executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila.
Germanyand Finland‘s foreign ministers said they were “deeply concerned” and it “immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.
A joint statement said: “Our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.
“Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.”
Cinia said “corrective measures” were under way and a repair ship was being prepared.
The damage to the fibre optic cable could take around five to 15 days to fix, Mr Knaapila told reporters.
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He said the damage occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland island and that Cinia was working with authorities to investigate.
The cable links central European telecoms networks to Finland, other Nordic countries and Asia.
Another submerged gas line and several telecoms cables were seriously damaged last year in the Baltic Sea.