The weaponisation of ‘bullying’

Bullying appears to be suffering from inflation, like everything else. Certainly as an art form it seems to be in decline. As exhibit A I should like to present the ‘bullying’ recently ascribed to Gavin Williamson MP.

Williamson is a hard man to defend. He has not excelled in any of the portfolios he has been given. The principal reason he sticks in the memory is that he does quite a good impression of someone doing an impression of someone sinister. The figure he most resembles is of someone who, at a young age, read the tiniest amount of Machiavelli and experienced feelings of arousal that they had not previously felt. ‘Haha, yes,’ I imagine a young Williamson saying. ‘It is indeed better to be feared than to be loved.’ He rose to be minister without portfolio.

Perhaps as a result, if you ever asked me to guess what an average Williamson text message would look like, it would exactly resemble the messages released this week which are at the centre of a ‘bullying’ row. Ahead of the Queen’s funeral, Williamson sent text messages to then chief whip Wendy Morton complaining about not having a seat in Westminster Abbey. ‘It’s very clear how you are going to treat a number of us which is very stupid and you are showing fuck all interest in pulling things together,’ one message read. Another said: ‘Don’t bother asking anything from me.’ The general tenor is: ‘You will regret the day that you crossed the member for South Staffordshire. Mwahaha.’ It has since been alleged that Williamson told a senior civil to ‘slit your throat’ and ‘jump out of a window’. He has now been reported to parliament’s bullying watchdog and resigned from government to ‘clear his name’.