Why Sue Gray is a hypocrite – according to those who worked with her
"It's a combination of hypocrisy, naivete and arrogance," says one former Number 10 special advisor. "There is a lot of hyperbole in politics but I find this staggering."
Sue Gray was always going to loom large over the business of the new Labour administration, but this powerful civil servant turned government enforcer has already broken a golden rule of non-elected political figures. She has become the story. The revelation that Sir Keir Starmer 's chief of staff is paid £170,000 a year – £3,000 more than her boss – and the ongoing white noise over the slew of gifts and freebies to the Prime Minister and senior ministers, has led former special advisors who once worked with her to cry foul over how Gray has gone from policing the ethics of high politics in Britain to overseeing what some allege is double standards.
The special advisor (often known as spads) adds: "Firstly, quite rightly, the Labour opposition went hard on the Tories in government for perceptions of financial impropriety and self-interest, using words like 'sleaze' – having done all of that and somehow not thought you're going to be held to exactly the same standards is just mad. Secondly, in Sue Gray's case, she made her career and her name in government as the guardian of standards. Not to be troubled by even the perception of the message that her salary sends is genuinely hard to understand."
It's a sign of how far attention has turned to Gray – and how fed up the Labour hierarchy appears about apparent discontent over the situation leaking from Downing Street – that Health Secretary Wes Streeting joked at an event at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, "It's going to get worse before it gets better. Sue Gray is hiding Lord Lucan and shot JFK, and I can't even tell you what she did to Shergar." Adding sarcastically, "I don't know how we're going to recover from this, frankly." It has not gone unnoticed that Gray, who accompanied Starmer to the recent North London derby between Tottenham and Arsenal, decided to stay away from Labour's first Party Conference since 2009.
"She really was a very toxic influence in government," says a second former Conservative special advisor. "When Starmer first hired her, there was a real sharp intake of breath from a lot of spads who had dealt with her in government, and a lot of civil servants as well, who were, on the whole, too sensible to say anything. If you're Starmer, why would you walk in and immediately p- - - off the team that helped you get into government and immediately p- off the team that you're depending on to reach into Whitehall?"
"When she was in the Civil Service she had the position that protected her – now she's a lot more exposed," says the first special advisor. "The way she has treated some of her colleagues in Labour means she has already made enemies and reduced her own political capital in the party. At tough times you need allies." Number 10 says: "We do not comment on leaks or these kinds of reports on individuals."
Gray has, of course, been under public scrutiny before, but until she left Whitehall to work for Labour she was widely considered a stalwart of objective propriety and the politically neutral Civil Service. After a variety of jobs in various departments of state since the 1990s, she served as director general of the Propriety and Ethics team in the Cabinet Office between 2012 and 2018.
"I remember in a trepidatious fashion personally negotiating my salary with Sue," explains the first special advisor. "We were treated in a pretty high-handed way because we were told that the government should be whiter than white and it was a privilege to do the job and you don't do it for the money. All of these things were told by Sue herself. If she did all this now in full knowledge then it's astonishing arrogance."
Gray conducted two Cabinet Office inquiries, the first over the " plebgate" affair in 2012, which led to Andrew Mitchell's resignation as chief whip. The second was in 2017, regarding the conduct of the then First Secretary of State Damian Green . After a spell in Northern Ireland's Civil Service, Gray returned to Whitehall as the second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office in 2021.
Her most high-profile investigation followed when Cabinet Secretary Simon Case recused himself from looking at the "partygate" allegations. She took over the process of looking at whether then PM Boris Johnson knew about social gatherings in Number 10 during the pandemic lockdowns. Her initial findings were published on January 31 2022 and the full report – following a Met Police investigation – was delivered in May that year with a devastating effect on Johnson's premiership .
"I never saw reason to doubt her impartiality when she was making inquiries as a civil servant," says the first advisor. "I saw spads and ministers badly treated by her but I saw that as universal and I think Labour advisors in the new administration would say exactly the same thing: that she has asked them to accept pay cuts and not signed off on contracts quickly. That does not help government run smoothly. A lot of advisors from the Cameron coalition era onwards would say the same thing. The big question that's been added now is that Sue seems happy to dish it out – maybe for good reasons – but doesn't seem willing to learn by example."
Number 10 says: "On pay, while we do not comment on reports on members of staff, as set out publicly special advisers cannot 'authorise expenditure of public funds or have responsibility for budgets' per the Code of Conduct. As such any decisions on special adviser pay and terms are made by officials, not political appointees. The Special Adviser People Board is chaired by a senior official who has formal delegation to make all final decisions on pay."
In March 2023 Gray resigned from the Cabinet Office and was appointed Starmer's chief of staff in September, an appointment criticised by some Conservative MPs, who questioned her impartiality over partygate. Gray, whose son Liam Conlon is now MP for Beckenham and Penge, formally joined Labour.
"To be fair to her, she has worked for such a long time in the Civil Service and she knows the tenure for these roles is short so she probably feels her salary reflects all those years of service," says a third former Downing Street spad. "But anyone who was truly political would know not to take a higher salary than the Prime Minister. Perhaps it's a power play and it ties Starmer in with her because he would have to agree with it."
"Even Sue's appointment was an enormous story because of the way it happened," says the first advisor. "Like it or not Sue Gray is already a lightning rod and that was true from the moment she decided to accept the job to investigate partygate and has continued through to becoming Keir Starmer's chief of staff. It's never a comfortable place for an advisor to be and it's completely the wrong place for an advisor to be. You can't do the job as effectively if you are the story."
Heading the Propriety and Ethics team for so long meant Gray also oversaw policies regarding donations, gifts and freebies – posing the same set of questions that have arisen again over the past fortnight since the disclosure that Starmer has accepted a succession of gifts from Labour donor Lord Alli and that Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson have also taken similar opportunities. There is no suggestion that either the ministers or Lord Alli have broken any rules, but questions of public perception and political judgement remain.
"When people are not inherently political they don't make the best political decisions," explains the third former special advisor. "Civil servants don't understand the party political culture and all that entails from the lowest level up. The same thing applies to accepting gifts and hospitality as it does to the salary. There was a strong sense from Labour that because they haven't been in government for so long they haven't been at the front of the queue for gifts like concert tickets. It sounds silly, but for them, it feels like a reward for all the hard years of toil. They feel like they deserve it."
"It's absolutely astounding to me that she didn't pick up on the freebies to Labour's front bench," says the second special advisor. "It is hypocritical in that she was responsible for checking ministers' interests and conflicts in the Cabinet Office."
That Downing Street sources briefed at the start of the party conference that neither Starmer, Rayner or Reeves would accept any further gifts of clothing suggests that although there was nothing improper about this arrangement, fears about public cynicism are at last being taken seriously. On the eve of the conference, Starmer told the Observer : "I've always said the rules have to be complied with. What I went after [Boris] Johnson on was not complying with the rules." Asked about Gray's salary he added: "I'm not going to talk about individual salaries for any member of staff. I'm the person who runs the government. I'm the person that takes the decisions and I'm the person that takes responsibility for those decisions."
"The problem here isn't Sue, it's Starmer's judgement," says the second spad. "She's already behaving in the mould of Dominic Cummings, which I think is really quite surprising because she witnessed [his behaviour] first hand. She doesn't really understand what a chief of staff is. Sue's just been somebody who's created her own processes in a darkened corner of Whitehall. And so here's the really critical difference from what she did before to what she does now, is that she's a much more public figure. She can't hide away."
