Jacob Rees-Mogg has dismissed a report that found Dominic Raab had bullied staff as a “veritable blizzard of snowflakes”.
Mr Raab, who had been a close ally of Mr Sunak, resigned as deputy prime minister and justice secretary on Friday after a report upheld two out of eight bullying complaints against him.
The report from independent investigator Adam Tolley concluded Mr Raab had “acted in a way which was intimidating”, and had been “unreasonably and persistently aggressive” in meetings.
Conservative MP for North East Somerset, Mr Rees-Mogg thought Mr Raab’s resignation was “unnecessary” and took aim at an ambassador reportedly involved in the accusations.
He suggested that the ambassador in question was too soft and said: “Is our ambassador a complete wet wipe?”
“You can’t intimidate an ambassador and, if you can, then the ambassador is no good.”
He added: “Ambassadors have to have a backbone to represent the country abroad.”
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “The main complaint that was upheld relates to an ambassador, an extraordinarily senior figure who was deliberately going against government policy in Gibraltar, an issue of the highest sensitivity.
“It seems that all Mr Raab did was raise the question of the Civil Service code, which wasn’t being followed. We cannot have a situation where ambassadors can ignore government policy, can freelance, can suggest that foreign forces should go onto British sovereign territory and not at least be held to account. So that seems a double standard.
“Civil servants can behave appallingly, whereas ministers do something perfectly normal and have to resign. I think this is quite wrong.”