How the campaign against Sue Gray backfired

Here is what is important about the decision of the Advisory Committee on Business Interests on Sue Gray’s appointment as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff - and Eric Pickles’ letter explaining why it recommends she wait six months, or till September, before taking up the post.

His letter is implicitly critical of her former colleagues in Whitehall - at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and at the Cabinet Office - for making an emotional case that she had breached impartiality by talking to Labour about leaving the civil service, and then - when asked for concrete examples - being unable to provide a single instance where she had actually breached impartiality or was likely to breach impartiality.

"Their submission and position was flaky and over the top," said a well-placed source.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) also implicitly criticises Whitehall for briefing against her in the press.

The net result is that ACOBA ended up imposing a shorter period in the wilderness for Gray than it might otherwise have done, and around half what the Cabinet Office asked for.

This is all pretty embarrassing for the centre of government.

If the Cabinet Office goes ahead with its threat to find her guilty of breaking the ministerial code, that will look odd given its failure to persuade ACOBA there was or would be a breach of her duty as a civil servant to be impartial.

And there is a separate risk for Whitehall. She will now be Keir Starmer’s main negotiator with Whitehall in the coming months on preparations for Labour going into government were it to win the next election.

Also and given the latest polls, the likelihood is she will be with Starmer in government after the election.

So is it really in Whitehall’s interest to alienate Gray - after all, one of their own - if they will have to work so closely with her, once she is Starmer’s most important aide on working with and reforming the machinery of government?

UPDATE 16:42: Just to confirm, the Cabinet Office has found Gray guilty of a "prima facie" breach of the civil service code, for meeting Keir Starmer last October without informing the cabinet secretary Simon Case or her Secretary of State, Michael Gove.

But we won’t know the gravity of the offence or the detail till Monday - or indeed whether it matters in view of ACOBA’s judgement she has not breached impartiality.

In the end, this is all about how much weight to put on the perception of a breach of impartiality, as opposed to an actual breach.

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