Ministers question if Sue Gray followed rules – as messages reveal Tory divides on Labour appointment
Tory MPs are fighting between themselves over Sue Gray’s decision to leave the civil service to work for Labour, leaked WhatsApp messages reveal – as questions continue to swirl over the controversial job move.
In a series of exchanges seen by Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, allies of Boris Johnson clashed with their colleagues who warned against criticising the decision by Sir Keir Starmer to hire the author of the partygate report.
Sky News revealed on Friday that the Labour leader appointed the top official as his chief of staff after she left the civil service.
Politics live: Tory MPs row over WhatsApp about how to respond to Sue Gray taking job with Starmer
The news has prompted outrage from some Tory MPs, especially those loyal to Mr Johnson, who said the findings of her investigation into lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street are now invalid and it was a “Labour stitch-up”.
However, the messages leaked to Sky News show not all Conservatives are happy with this attack line, with former minister Jackie Doyle-Price warning it is “ill judged” and “burning our constitution”.
Ms Doyle-Price said in a group chat on Monday morning: “A reminder folks – Boris Johnson appointed Sue Gray to investigate partygate. No one else. So much for a stitch up . He wasn’t brought down by partygate. Or by Whitehall.
“He lost the confidence of the Parliamentary party over the appointment of the previous deputy chief whip (Chris Pincher).”
The former minister warned “this anti-Whitehall pile on is simply burning our constitution”.
Allies of Boris Johnson clashed with Conservative colleagues over Sue Gray’s move to Labour
“Starmer has shown poor judgment here but a lot of what is being said by Colleagues is also I’ll [sic] judged,” she said.
However, the Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, disagreed, saying the former senior civil servant was making “a mockery of the system she purported to be protecting”.
Tim Loughton, the backbench MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, came partially to Ms Doyle-Price’s defence, arguing that criticism should be focused on Sir Keir rather than Sue Gray to avoid “refocussing public attention on partygate”.
But it was former culture secretary Nadine Dorries who most aggressively rejected the appeal to step back from attacks, starting her message: “Are you serious, Jackie?”.
Tory MPs fight between themselves over Sue Gray in leaked WhatsApp chat
The scale of the rancour and emotion over Boris Johnson and the decision by top official Sue Gray to work for Labour was on display today in a WhatsApp exchange obtained by Sky News.
In a series of messages on a group chat this morning, allies of Johnson clashed with other Tories who warned against criticising the decision by Sir Keir Starmer to hire the author of the party gate report.
The leaked WhatsApps show the depth of decision between allies of Johnson and the rest.
A message by former minister Jackie Doyle-Price said attacks on Sue Gray and the civil service were “ill judged” and were “burning our constitution”.
The Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, who has made his criticised Ms Gray and Sir Keir loudly and repeatedly, was having none of it – saying the former senior civil servant was making “a mockery of the system she purported to be protecting”.
Tim Loughton, the backbench MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, came partially to Jackie Doyle-Price’s defence, arguing that criticism should be focused on Starmer rather than Sue Gray to avoid “refocussing public attention on partygate”.
But it was former culture secretary Nadine Dorries who most aggressively rejected the appeal to step back from attacks, starting her message: “Are you serious, Jackie?”.
In the midst of all the arguments, one MP made the point that such disagreements should probably be kept off WhatsApp – “It will leak”, observed Paul Bristow.
Tory MPs row over Sue Gray: Read the full exchange
The messages lay bare the scale of the rancour and emotion over Mr Johnson’s departure and Ms Gray’s perceived role in it, after her partygate report found there was a “failure of leadership and judgment” in Number 10 during his premiership.
Mr Johnson, who ordered the civil servant’s investigation, went on to receive one of the 126 fines issued by the Metropolitan Police during its own probe.
The former prime minister narrowly survived a no-confidence vote over the scandal, but was forced to resign a month later after support in his cabinet collapsed over his handling of the Chris Pincher affair.
He remains under investigation by the cross-party Privileges Committee over whether he lied to parliament with his denials of lockdown-flouting parties.
Sue Gray ‘may have breached rules’
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Sue Gray job sparks fiery debate
The leaked messages emerged amid a heated debate on Ms Gray’s hiring in the Commons – with Labour dismissing the furore as a “conspiracy theory” spread by Mr Johnson and his allies.
Several Conservative MPs raised concerns about her planned move to the Opposition and pressed it to release the full details of their exchanges with the former civil servant.
Jeremy Quinn, a government minister, cast doubt on whether the partygate investigator followed the proper process of notifying officials about her planned job move – and suggested her new appointment could be blocked.
The paymaster general said there are four rules or guidance for civil servants that are “pertinent”, including informing the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) of new roles they wish to take up.
“The rules state that approval must be obtained prior to a job offer being announced. The Cabinet Office has not as yet been informed that the relevant notification to ACOBA has been made,” he said.
Mr Quinn said ACOBA could recommend that the appointment would not be appropriate and confirmed there’s a standard three month waiting period for its decision – but said it could take as long as two years.
Read More:
Sue Gray: ‘No reason to believe’ partygate investigator not impartial, minister says
He confirmed the Cabinet Office is “looking into the circumstances leading up to Gray’s resignation” and urged Labour to publish its communications with Ms Gray ahead of her appointment.
‘Conspiracy theory from sleaze-obsessed Tories’
Speaking in the Commons, deputy leader Angela Rayner accused the “sleaze-addicted” Tories of being “so self-obsessed that they are using parliamentary time to indulge in the conspiracy theories of the former prime minister and his gang”.
“What will they ask for next, a Westminster hall debate on the moon landings, the bill of dredging the Loch Ness, or a public inquiry into whether the earth is flat?” she asked.
“This debate says more about the delusions of the modern Conservative Party than it does anything else.”
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Earlier, Sir Keir declined to say when he first contacted her about joining his team when pressed repeatedly, saying only that “it was recent” and after his former chief of staff left in October last year.
But he insisted he had “absolutely no contact” with Ms Gray while she was investigating rule breaches across Downing Street and Whitehall.
Donkey karts loaded with wrapped parcels of unknown goods weave around the large puddles of water left in the dried riverbed.
Young men quickly hop over laid bricks to bridge the puddles followed by women treading carefully with babies on their backs.
The Limpopo River’s seasonal dryness is a natural pathway for those moving into South Africa from Zimbabwe illegally.
A sandy narrow beach undisturbed by border patrols with crossers chatting peacefully under trees on both banks as men furiously load and unload smuggled goods on the roadside.
Against the anti-immigration rage and xenophobia boiling over in South Africa’s urban centres, the tranquillity and ease of the border jumping is astonishingly calm.
People crossing the dried Limpopo River to get from Zimbabwe to South Africa
“You can’t stop someone who is suffering. They have to find any means to come find food,” one man tells us anonymously as he crosses illegally.
At 55 years old, he remembers the 3,500-volt electric fence called the “snake of fire” installed here by the Apartheid regime.
Hundreds of women and children escaping conflict in the late 1980s and early 1990s were electrocuted.
A woman near the border
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Today, people fleeing drought and economic strife are smuggled across or walking through border blindspots like this one.
“Now, it’s easy,” he says. “There is no border authority here.”
He crosses regularly and always illegally. While he laughs at the lack of border agents, he says he has been stopped by soldiers in the past.
“They send us back but then the next day you try to come back and it is fine.”
Part of the dilapidated border fence that separates South Africa with Zimbabwe
We find a few soldiers on our way back to the main road. They look confused by our presence but unphased. It is hard to believe they are unaware of the streams of people and goods moving across the dried riverbed just a few hundred metres away.
Border ‘fence’ trampled and full of holes
We drive along the border fence to get to the official border post into Zimbabwe, Beitbridge.
“Fence” is a generous term for the knee-height barbed wire laid across 25 miles of South Africa’s northern edges in 2020. Some sections are completely trampled, and others are gaping with holes.
The concrete fortress is a drastic change to the soft, sandy riverbed. Queues dismantle and reassemble as eager crowds rush from one building to another as instructions change.
Zimbabweans can live, work and study in South Africa on a Zimbabwean exemption permit, but many like Precious, a mother-of-three, cannot even afford a passport.
Precious, a mother-of-three, staying at a shelter in Musina, South Africa
Shelters for women and trafficked children in Musina
When we meet her at a women’s shelter in the border town of Musina, she says she only has $30 (£23.90) to find work in South Africa and that a passport costs $50 (£39.80).
“My husband is disabled and can’t work or do anything. I’m the only one doing everything – school, food, everything. I’m the one who has to take care of the kids and that situation makes me come here to find something,” she says tearfully before breaking down.
The shelter next door is home to trafficked children that were rescued. Other shelters are full of men looking for work.
Musina is a stagnant sanctuary for Zimbabweans searching for a better life who become paralysed here – a sign of the declining state of Zimbabwe and the growing hostility deeper in South Africa.
In Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic centre, illegal immigrants are facing raids and deportations organised by the Ministry of Home Affairs at the behest of popular discontent.
The heavy-handed escalation in the interior sits in stark contrast to the lax border control.
Derelict buildings in Johannesburg where migrants are living
“I wonder how serious our government is about dealing with immigration,” says Nomzamo Zondo, human rights attorney and executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), as we walk through Johannesburg’s derelict inner city.
“I think part of it is that the South Africa we want to build is one that wants to welcome its neighbours and doesn’t forget the people that welcomed us when we didn’t have a home – and that is why I think they are so poor at maintaining the borders.”
She adds: “But then the call has to be one that says once you are here, how do we make sure you are regularised here, that you know who you are, and contribute to the economy at this point in time.”
More makeshift migrant accommodation in Johannesburg
Climate of anti-migrant hate
In 1994 as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela ordered that all electric fences be taken down.
His dream for South Africa to become a pan-African haven for civilians of neighbouring countries that provided sanctuary for fighters in the anti-Apartheid movement was criticised by local constituents back then.
Sky correspondent Yousra Elbagir speaks to migrants inside a government van
Now in a climate of increasing anti-migrant hate, that vision is rejected outright.
“I think that is the highest level of sell-out. When South Africans were in exile, they were in camps and they were restricted to go to other parts of those countries,” says Bungani Thusi, a member of anti-immigrant movement Operation Dudula, at a protest in Soweto.
Anti-immigrant protesters from the group Operation Dudula at a demonstration in Soweto
He is wearing faux military fatigues and has the upright position of an officer heading into battle.
“Why do you allow foreigners to go all over South Africa and run businesses and make girlfriends?” he adds, with all the seriousness of protest.
“South Africans can’t even have their own girlfriends because the foreigners have taken over the girlfriend space.”
Hamas has approved a list of 34 Israeli hostages to be returned as part of a possible Gaza ceasefire deal, an official from the Palestinian group has claimed.
But the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put out a statement saying Hamas had not provided a hostage list “up to this moment”.
Israel and Hamas argued on Sunday over the details of an agreement to halt fighting in the war-ravaged territory and bring captives home.
A renewed push is under way to reach a ceasefire in the 15-month war before US president-elect Donald Trump takes office on 20 January.
Liri Albag’s family said her ‘severe psychological distress is evident’. Pic: PA
It comes as Hamas released a video of a 19-year-old Israeli hostage in Gaza.
In an undated recording, Liri Albag – one of five female soldiers kidnapped in Hamas’s 7 October attack – speaks under duress and shares her anguish at having been held for 450 days.
Speaking in Hebrew, she calls for the Israeli government to secure her release and says: “Today is the beginning of a new year; the whole world is celebrating. Only we are entering a dark year, a year of loneliness.”
Ms Albag – who has turned 19 while being held hostage – adds that a fellow, unnamed captive has been injured. “We are living in an extremely terrifying nightmare,” she says.
The teenager’s family said the video has “torn our hearts to pieces”.
“This is not the daughter and sister we know. Her severe psychological distress is evident,” they said in a statement shared by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
The family has not given permission for the video of Ms Albag to be shared publicly but they have authorised the release of two photos.
Ms Albag’s loved ones are calling on the Israeli government and world leaders to use the current ceasefire talks to bring all remaining hostages back alive.
“It’s time to make decisions as if your own children were there,” they said.
Mr Netanyahu’s office said he has spoken Ms Albag’s parents and told them efforts to bring hostages home are “ongoing, including at this very moment”.
“Anyone who dares to harm our hostages will bear full responsibility for their actions,” he said.
Read more:
Timeline of events since October 7 attack
Gaza’s health system ‘on brink of collapse’
Liri Albag was taken from Nahal Oz. Pic: Bring Them Home Now
Roughly 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and as of December last year, 96 remained in the group’s custody.
Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,805 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
It said 88 people have been killed in the past 24 hours. At least 17 were killed in airstrikes on homes in Gaza City on Saturday.
Several children were among those who died, medics said.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
Hamas’s video of Ms Albag, and Israel’s airstrikes, come amid a fresh push for an agreement to end the conflict in Gaza.
Israeli representatives arrived in Doha, Qatar, on Friday to resume indirect ceasefire talks brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
Hamas has said it is committed to reaching an agreement, but it is unclear how close the two sides are.
Joe Biden, whose US presidency comes to an end in just over a fortnight, has urged Hamas to agree a deal – while Mr Trump has said there will “be hell to pay” in Gaza if the hostages are not released before his inauguration in January.
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