Sue Gray is out, but the rot at the core of Starmer’s No 10 festers on

KEIR STARMER with his Chief of Staff SUE GRAY is seen in Westminster as he appears on BBC local radios
KEIR STARMER with his Chief of Staff SUE GRAY is seen in Westminster as he appears on BBC local radios

It was back in June 2020 when Sir Keir Starmer first declared that Boris Johnson must “get a grip” on Downing Street. Until that moment, Sir Keir had attempted to give the government the benefit of the doubt on its handling of the Covid pandemic.

But after Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings was caught testing out his eyesight on the A1 during the first lockdown, Starmer couldn’t resist calling for his resignation and demanding that his predecessor “restore public confidence”.

That was six months into the Johnson administration. It’s taken Labour just 97 days to unravel without anything near the sort of hospital pass that Johnson was handed after stepping foot inside No 10. And while it might be convenient for Starmer to blame the resignation of his former chief of staff on infighting, the guilty party in all this is the former Director of Public Prosecutions himself.

Let us examine the evidence. Gray may have been useless. She may have lacked any policy experience and political nous. Indeed, she may have allowed herself to become the story with her pay demands – and reportedly authorised the granting of a Downing Street pass to Lord Alli after the Labour peer donated £10,0000 to her son Liam Conlon’s election campaign in Beckenham and Penge.

But she is not responsible for the lack of judgment which saw her appointed in the first place. It’s hard to see how she can be blamed for No 10’s woeful strategic communications after “donor-gate” broke. Nor was she behind the calamitous decision to delay the Budget to October – which has meant months of speculation about which taxes might be hiked, contributing to the steep downturn in consumer and business confidence.

Gray has come under fire for limiting access to the PM, but that is the chief of staff’s job. Yes, she found herself in a power struggle against her replacement, Morgan McSweeney. But it was Keir Starmer who allowed his senior advisers to “fight like rats in a sack” – an expression, coincidentally, deployed by Starmer last winter, as he tried to pressure Rishi Sunak into calling an earlier election.

Gray could have been tougher on sleaze. She could have laid down the law and set clear boundaries on gifts. She didn’t need to accept freebies herself. But most of what has gone wrong since July 4 is not Gray’s fault; it’s the Prime Minister’s.

The “government of service” he pledged to lead is becoming a government of self-service, with Gray sacrificed for its own preservation.

Yet, and I’m afraid this is all too familiar, the approach has been to blame the only woman in charge. A little like Allegra Stratton, the former Downing Street press secretary, who fell on her sword in December 2021 after being caught on camera joking about Partygate, Gray is the one who’s taking the bullet. Downing Street has been forced to deny Starmer has a “woman problem”, an accusation which was also levelled at the Prime Minister by Rosie Duffield as she sensationally quit the Labour Party. “It’s very clear,” Duffield said, “that the lads are in charge.”

Despite repeatedly decrying Johnson’s “dysfunctional” administration when opposition leader, we now have Starmer staffed by former PR guys and campaigners who seem to have no record of running anything. As with Johnson, we seem to be witnessing a highly effective campaign team failing to make the switch to actual governance.

Was all this what Labour meant when it emblazoned last month’s party conference with the slogan: “Change begins”?