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.