How Labour fell in love with Partygate investigator Sue Gray

LONDON — Britain’s Labour Party has a new idol and they can’t stop talking about her.

Nearly three months ago, Labour Leader Keir Starmer appointed career civil servant Sue Gray his chief of staff. The appointment sent shockwaves through Westminster, and was a surprisingly political move for a career-long civil servant, famed for her dispassionate but tough verdicts as a former director of propriety and ethics for the British government. To make matters worse in the eyes of her opponents, Gray had taken a starring role in the downfall of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson by overseeing an investigation into his administration’s lockdown-busting parties.

For all the furor over her appointment, key players from many wings of the Labour Party agree she’s a welcome force, professionalizing the Labour operation as it eyes an election next year.

POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen officials and shadow ministers who have worked with Gray since she joined. All were granted anonymity to speak frankly about a senior colleague — yet not one was prepared to criticize her in any way.

The reverence for her is almost cult-like. Colleagues invariably describe her as a no-nonsense operator — “not one to mince words,” according to one senior official — with good people skills. “She’s very kind, collegiate and empathetic and has got all those soft skills that people in politics don’t always have,” another official said.  A second shadow Cabinet minister described Gray as a “breath of fresh air.” A third said that meetings had become more productive thanks to Gray’s “professionalism.”

Shadow cabinet ministers and Labour aides bring her up unprompted, praising her professionalism and collaborative working style. One official said staff “flocked” to wherever Gray was working in her first week — whether that was parliament or the party’s Southwark HQ.

Unlike many of her predecessors, chiefs of staff to party leaders, Gray isn’t one to operate in the shadows. She’s been spotted hobnobbing in parliamentary coffee areas and caused a buzz by turning up at major social occasions, including several cocktail parties at Labour conference and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ book launch — more than once dressed in a striking leather jacket.

She attends shadow cabinet and has chaired daily morning meetings on the response to the Israel-Hamas war. “This is her bread and butter — organizing Whitehall in a crisis,” said a civil servant who has worked with her.

“Sue spent the first few weeks just asking a lot of questions about why we do things the way we do. It was impressive — and also quite difficult for some of us,” said a senior aide to Starmer. They added that since she joined the team, “the change has been instant.”

With Labour well ahead in the polls, Starmer is keen to project an image of prime ministerial competence. Gray, with all her years of experience at the top of the British government, could well be running the country within a year and seems keen to show her new colleagues she means business.

“She’s pretty ruthless at timekeeping,” one shadow cabinet minister said — “a half an hour meeting is a half an hour meeting.”

From enforcer to unifier

As Labour’s leader has scrambled to suppress a revolt among his own side over the party’s position on the Israel-Hamas war, officials point to Gray’s key role in managing the crisis.

Gray held conversations last week with MPs who were tempted to break with the party line and back an amendment calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Now Labour officials say she has played a role this week in bringing the U.K. and Scottish Labour party positions on Israel and Gaza closer together.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was the most senior Labour politician to back a cease-fire last month, contravening Starmer’s position which echoed the U.S. and U.K. governments in calling for “humanitarian pauses” rather than a cease-fire.

Scottish Labour put forward an amendment Monday to back an immediate cease-fire but with caveats moderating that position, including recognizing that for “any cease-fire to work it requires all sides to comply,” and expressing horror at Hamas’ statement that they would continue to attack Israel.

The amendment was drafted primarily by Sarwar’s team, with Shadow Scotland Secretary Ian Murray and Political Director Luke Sullivan among those who were key to the discussions.

Two officials and an MP said that Gray, who has liaised between Scotland and London, played a part through her chief of staff role. One of the officials said she had acted as a “conduit” in discussions between teams Starmer and Sarwar.

A second senior Labour official confirmed this and said of Gray: “She’s good at bringing people together.”

Women power

Half a dozen female MPs and aides said it was also striking that Gray has earned a fan base among some Labour women who think the top layers of the party have been too male-dominated.

One Labour aide said they thought Gray would help Starmer’s top circle break away from its “Labour lads’ groupthink.”

And a shadow cabinet minister said: “She’s calling time on a really poor culture that has been dominated by boys with no experience outside a tiny circle in Westminster, and [that] has crowded out the politicians who they hold in contempt.”

Gray is not the only top civil servant with close links to the Labour leadership. Tom Scholar, who was sacked by Liz Truss as the top civil servant in the Treasury, is rumored to be among those informally advising Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Scholar and Reeves have been friends for 20 years. Reeves’ team say suggestions Scholar is advising her are a “bit of a stretch,” but that the pair do meet up socially and sometimes discuss politics and the economy.

Gray areas

Barely a month into her role, Gray travelled to Scotland to campaign for Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election and spent polling day knocking on doors.

“She really enjoyed getting into long conversations with people on the doorstep,” a Labour official who campaigned in that by-election said. “She absolutely loved the doors and was brilliant at it,” an MP who was there said.

Gray was also spotted campaigning in the Mid Bedfordshire by-election a few weeks ago. A Labour activist said she was undergoing something of a “crash course in party politics.” Several officials said she was getting more involved on the political side of things than expected.

Her influence is already compared to that of Labour campaign director Morgan McSweeney, who has worked with Starmer since his leadership campaign in 2020 and is now focused on winning the election. Gray was in the room where Starmer carried out his reshuffle on September 4, her first day in the job.

“Part of her role has become troubleshooting and keeping the show on the road,” the Labour official quoted directly above said of Gray. They added she oversees civil society engagement, policy development and governance, or in other words “anything that isn’t electoral — that is still Morgan’s big realm.”

The first senior Labour official quoted in this article said the question of whether Gray’s job would conflict with McSweeney’s had been “on people’s minds” before she joined, but “so far there’s been no conflict between the two — that’s not happened.” However, they added: “Whether that will continue, I’ve no idea. As we get to a general election those two [roles] collide.”