What Sue Gray’s exit says about Starmer

Sue Gray has resigned from her position as Downing Street chief of staff and will take on a new government role, Number 10 has confirmed. Credit: PA

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Keir Starmer’s ruthlessness and unsentimentality is like nothing I’ve encountered in decades of reporting on the brutal world of British politics.

It was transparently obvious that the centre of his government had been dysfunctional since the general election on July 4.

But to replace a chief of staff, Sue Gray, who endured considerable opprobrium from former colleagues and the media for choosing to work for him in the first place, and so soon after the election, is quite something.

There are a few reasons why Keir Starmer has replaced her with his campaigning guru Morgan McSweeney.

None of them is a secret.

Here they are in no particular order, though the first is incomparably the most important: the government lacks strategic direction.

Answering the question “what is the point of Starmer’s government?” should be fairly easy three months after Labour won its huge Commons majority.

But unless you think it’s Starmer’s lifelong ambition to be remembered for taking £300 from elderly pensioners or receiving £1000 Sandro suits as presents, it isn’t.

In other words, there is an overwhelming case that the chief of staff role should be filled by someone whose expertise is politics and policy - which are McSweeney’s strengths rather than Gray’s.

Second, the negative publicity around freebies is the fault of Starmer and ministers who took them, not Gray’s. The drip-drip of information is redolent however of a governing machine that hasn’t got a grip.

Ditto, the row over pay cuts for special advisers.

Finally there has been endless briefings to the media about the unhappiness with Gray among her colleagues, though most of these have been in the great British tradition of political assassinations, namely vague and anonymous.

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So Starmer has again manifested what I have frequently told you is his most important trait, namely his obsession with winning.

And he has rewarded the individual, McSweeney, who devised one of the most effective election campaigns in history.

I understand the McSweeney ascendancy has been coming since the end of Labour conference and was all but set in stone a week ago.

Actually I should more properly call it the McSweeney/McFadden ascendancy since the Number 10 reshuffle announced today also manifests the influence of Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - notably in the appointment of his ally James Lyons as director of strategic communications.

All the appointments - there are three others - show McSweeney and McFadden have won a power struggle with Gray, whose reality they all denied.

But in their victory there is a warning for them: if they don’t deliver for their boss, they’ll be out faster than Starmer can say the phrase he oft repeated about Gray, namely that he didn’t recognise the press reports that said she wasn’t working out in that job. Ha!

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