Connect with us

Published

on

When Sir Keir Starmer appointed Sue Gray as his chief of staff, he said her “unrivalled experience” in Whitehall would help get Labour ready to form a “mission-led” government.

But nearly two months into the job, as the scale of discontent around his positioning on the Israel-Hamas war has grown, the top civil servant has found herself plunged instead into the heart of an emotionally charged internal party rift.

Insiders say she has been seen comforting MPs and staff “in tears” over the unfolding drama and the backlash they have received from constituents, with one Labour source telling Sky News she had “literally been putting her arms around people”.

Sir Keir’s refusal to call for an outright ceasefire, and an interview with LBC which led to him clarifying remarks he made about Israel’s decision to limit supplies to Gaza, has prompted outrage in Muslim communities and beyond.

Those who have watched her operate up close say Ms Gray has been adding a “human element” to the party’s approach – which some critics have described as previously being “a bit macho”.

“She’s been providing so much of what has been missing. She’s breaking up the boys’ club.”

Like Labour leaders before him, Sir Keir inherited a party split along left and right when he replaced Jeremy Corbyn following the 2019 election defeat.

More on Labour

He sought to manage the threat posed by the left by hiring aides who sought to minimise their influence – for example, by disciplining those who failed to toe the party line and by keeping a tight control over parliamentary selections.

That approach, spearheaded by Ms Gray’s predecessor Morgan McSweeney, has been seen as successful – if unpopular with some.

Read more from Sky News:
How Hamas carried out deadly Israel attack
Labour’s ostracised left wingers believe they could hold sway

But some Labour sources suggest the situation in which Sir Keir now finds himself has exposed the vulnerabilities that remain in the party – that the leader of the opposition’s office (LOTO) is functioning more as a campaign machine distracted by “factionalism” than a party of government.

Instead of engaging with MPs, some of the Labour leader’s aides are seen as having a dismissive attitude towards them.

“The ‘boys’ in LOTO basically think that MPs aren’t important,” one source said. “They think that everything happens in HQ.

“We’re in a different phase of the Labour Party and they are not recognising that. The Corbyn war is over and they now need to engage with MPs.”

By contrast, some sources have praised Ms Gray for taking a more “conciliatory” approach that looks to bring people into the conversation rather than exclude them.

“Sue doesn’t have the baggage of years of Labour infighting,” the source explained. “She has come in with a fresh pair of eyes and a different attitude.

“I think people suspect she’s not really got any politics because she’s a former civil servant – but she’s got more politics and experience in her little finger than probably most of them put together.”

A Labour frontbencher agreed, telling Sky News: “She is a grown-up who wants us to function – for the country, not for the factions.”

Another party official said that while Ms Gray was more “approachable” and “communicative” with the shadow cabinet, Mr McSweeney “instantly understood” the implications of the Gaza row for MPs – dismissing suggestions to the contrary.

“He knows better than anyone the different constituencies of Labour support,” they added.

Politics and people

Ms Gray has been operating in Whitehall for decades, holding senior positions such as director general of propriety and ethics and second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office.

But it was her investigation into partygate during the COVID pandemic that made her a household name and caught the eye of Sir Keir.

Alex Thomas, a programme director at the Institute for Government, who knows Ms Gray and has worked with her, told Sky News the people skills she picked up in the civil service would be useful in managing the current situation.

“It makes her well-equipped to advise and broker and understand where people are coming from in potentially hot and fractious environments and to play that peacemaker role,” he said.

What may have provided some training ground for Ms Gray is the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, which plunged Tony Blair into a crisis of his own. Ms Gray was serving in Whitehall at the time.

“It is likely her role would have been less about foreign policy and the diplomatic aspects and more about the ministerial side of things such as managing the domestic government fallout,” Mr Thomas said.

One senior union figure also agreed that decades of experience in Whitehall had led to her becoming a critical adviser to Sir Keir.

“Sue has dealt with some of the most sensitive issues in government,” they explained. “She’s advised prime ministers; she’s investigated prime ministers.

“Her job as a civil servant was to advise. She can’t dominate, she can’t enforce, she has to make people agree with her point of view by persuading them.”

Stepping on toes?

As well as managing tensions within the party, Sir Keir has also had to grapple with unhappy stakeholders, including metro mayors with whom relations have been strained over a number of policy issues.

One Labour insider accused Sir Keir’s office of having previously adopted a “brand of Millwall politics” – a reference to the club’s supporter’s chant: “No one likes us, we don’t care.”

They argue this alienated mayors and led to poor relations, whereas Ms Gray is said to be involving mayors in political discussions and ramping up day-to-day engagement.

“In a few short weeks Sue Gray has already started to repair many relationships, involving politicians in decision-making for the first time, bringing Angela [Rayner] closer and reaching out to the mayors and trying to mend bridges,” the insider said.

“Her conciliatory approach is winning her many fans.”

Read more:
A brief history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Khan accuses Braverman of ‘posturing’ over pro-Palestinian protests

Another senior Labour source told Sky News: “Her style of leadership is inclusive. She’s a very impressive operator.

“She’s the first person in, she’s the last person to leave and she talks to everyone, even the most junior person in the room. She’s even tackled how some people treat the cleaners.”

But, they said, Ms Gray’s approach might mean she could “step on the toes” of those who have hitherto enjoyed unrivalled authority.

“Sue has asserted herself in the process of political decision-making but she won’t go unchallenged,” the senior source added.

“She’s like a new club manager who faces a dressing room clique with too much power, and she needs to break that if she’s going to deliver results.”

Continue Reading

Politics

Phoenix FIRE investors allege exit scam; owner moves to dismiss case

Published

on

By

Phoenix FIRE investors allege exit scam; owner moves to dismiss case

Phoenix FIRE investors allege exit scam; owner moves to dismiss case

Daniel Ianello has asked a Tennessee court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of orchestrating an exit scam after taking over a crypto project.

Continue Reading

Politics

I’ve followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office – here’s what I’ve observed

Published

on

By

I've followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office - here's what I've observed

July 5 2024, 1pm: I remember the moment so clearly.

Keir Starmer stepped out of his sleek black car, grasped the hand of his wife Vic, dressed in Labour red, and walked towards a jubilant crowd of Labour staffers, activists and MPs waving union jacks and cheering a Labour prime minister into Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.

Starmer and his wife took an age to get to the big black door, as they embraced those who had helped them win this election – their children hidden in the crowd to watch their dad walk into Number 10.

Politics latest: Corbyn starts new party

Keir Starmer, not the easiest public speaker, came to the podium and told the millions watching this moment the “country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal”.

He spoke about the “weariness at the heart of the nation” and “the lack of trust” in our politicians as a “wound” that “can only be healed by actions not words”. He added: “This will take a while but the work of change begins immediately.”

A loveless landslide

That was a day in which this prime minister made history. His was a victory on a scale that comes around but one every few decades.

He won the largest majority in a quarter of a century and with it a massive opportunity to become one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern Britain – alongside the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.

But within the win was a real challenge too.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

Starmer’s was a loveless landslide, won on a lower share of the vote than Blair in all of his three victories and 6 percentage points lower than the 40% Jeremy Corbyn secured in the 2017 general election.

It was the lowest vote share than any party forming a post-war majority government. Support for Labour was as shallow as it was wide.

In many ways then, it was a landslide built on shaky foundations: low public support, deep mistrust of politicians, unhappiness with the state of public services, squeezed living standards and public finances in a fragile state after the huge cost of the pandemic and persistent anaemic growth.

Put another way, the fundamentals of this Labour government, whatever Keir Starmer did, or didn’t do, were terrible. Blair came in on a new dawn. This Labour government, in many ways, inherited the scorched earth.

The one flash of anger I’ve seen

For the past year, I have followed Keir Starmer around wherever he goes. We have been to New York, Washington (twice), Germany (twice), Brazil, Samoa, Canada, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Brussels. I can’t even reel off the places we’ve been to around the UK – but suffice to say we’ve gone to all the nations and regions.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Starmer pushed on scale of “landslide” election win

What I have witnessed in the past year is a prime minister who works relentlessly hard. When we flew for 27 hours non-stop to Samoa last autumn to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit, every time I looked up at the plane, I saw a solitary PM, his headlight shining on his hair, working away as the rest of us slept or watched films.

He also seems almost entirely unflappable. He rarely expresses emotion. The only time I have seen a flash of anger was when I questioned him about accepting freebies in a conversation that ended up involving his family, and when Elon Musk attacked Jess Phillips.

I have also witnessed him being buffeted by events in a way that he would not have foreseen. The arrival of Donald Trump into the White House has sucked the prime minister into a whirlwind of foreign crises that has distracted him from domestic events.

When he said over the weekend, as a way of explanation not an excuse, that he had been caught up in other matters and taken his eye off the ball when it came to the difficulties of welfare reform, much of Westminster scoffed, but I didn’t.

I had followed him around in the weeks leading up to that vote. We went from the G7 in Canada, to the Iran-Israel 12-day war, to the NATO summit in the Hague, as the prime minister dealt with, in turn, the grooming gangs inquiry decision, the US-UK trade deal, Donald Trump, de-escalation in the Middle East and a tricky G7 summit, the assisted dying vote, the Iran-Israel missile crisis.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

In September 2024, the PM defended taking £20k GCSE donation

He was taking so many phone calls on Sunday morning from Chequers, that he couldn’t get back to London for COBRA [national emergency meeting] because he couldn’t afford to not have a secure phone line for the hour-long drive back to Downing Street.

He travelled to NATO, launched the National Security Review and agreed to the defence alliance’s commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. So when he came back from the Hague into a full-blown welfare rebellion, I did have some sympathy for him – he simply hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with the rebellion as it began to really gather steam.

Dealing with rebellion

Where I have less sympathy with the prime minister and his wider team is how they let it get to that point in the first place.

Keir Starmer wasn’t able to manage the latter stages of the rebellion, but the decisions made months earlier set it up in all its glory, while Downing Street’s refusal to heed the concerns of MPs gave it momentum to spiral into a full-blown crisis.

The whips gave warning after 120 MPs signed a letter complaining about the measures, the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall had done the same, but Starmer and Reeves were, in the words of one minister, “absolutist”.

“They assumed people complaining about stuff do it because they are weak, rather than because they are strong,” said the minister, who added that following the climbdown, figures in Number 10 “just seemed completely without knowledge of the gravity of it”.

That he marks his first anniversary with the humiliation of having to abandon his flagship welfare reforms or face defeat in the Commons – something that should be unfathomable in the first year of power with a majority that size – is disappointing.

To have got it that wrong, that quickly with your parliamentary party, is a clear blow to his authority and is potentially more chronic. I am not sure yet how he recovers.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’

Keir Starmer said he wanted to rule country first, party second, but finds himself pinned by a party refusing to accept his centrist approach. Now, ministers tell MPs that there will be a financial consequence of the government’s decision to delay tightening the rules on claiming disability benefits beyond the end of 2026.

A shattered Rachel Reeves now has to find the £5bn she’d hoped to save another way. She will defend her fiscal rules, which leaves her the invidious choice of tax rises or spending cuts. Sit back and watch for the growing chorus of MPs that will argue Starmer needs to raise more taxes and pivot to the left.

That borrowing costs of UK debt spiked on Wednesday amid speculation that the chancellor might resign or be sacked, is a stark reminder that Rachel Reeves, who might be unpopular with MPs, is the markets’ last line of defence against spending-hungry Labour MPs. The party might not like her fiscal rules, but the markets do.

What’s on the horizon for year two?

The past week has set the tone now for the prime minister’s second year in office. Those around him admit that the parliamentary party is going to be harder to govern. For all talk of hard choices, they have forced the PM to back down from what were cast as essential welfare cuts and will probably calculate that they can move him again if they apply enough pressure.

There is also the financial fall-out, with recent days setting the scene for what is now shaping up to be another definitive budget for a chancellor who now has to fill a multi-billion black hole in the public finances.

But I would argue that the prime minister has misjudged the tone as he marks that first year. Faced with a clear crisis and blow to his leadership, instead of tackling that head on the prime minister sought to ignore it and try to plough on, embarking on his long-planned launch of the 10-year NHS plan to mark his year in office, as if the chancellor’s tears and massive Labour rebellions over the past 48 hours were mere trifles.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?

It was inevitable that this NHS launch would be overshadowed by the self-inflicted shambles over welfare and the chancellor’s distress, given this was the first public appearance of both of them since it had all blown up.

But when I asked the prime minister to explain how it had gone so wrong on welfare and how he intended to rebuild your trust and authority in your party, he completely ignored my question. Instead, he launched into a long list of Labour’s achievements in his first year: 4 million extra NHS appointments; free school meals to half a million more children; more free childcare; the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation; and the US, EU and India free trade deals.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Starmer defends reaction to Reeves crying in PMQs

I can understand the point he was making and his frustration that his achievements are being lost in the maelstrom of the political drama. But equally, this is politics, and he is the prime minister. This is his story to tell, and blowing up your welfare reform on the anniversary week of your government is not the way to do it.

Is Starmer failing to articulate his mission?

For Starmer himself, he will do what I have seen him do before when he’s been on the ropes, dig in, learn from the errors and try to come back stronger. I have heard him in recent days talk about how he has always been underestimated and then proved he can do it – he is approaching this first term with the same grit.

If you ask his team, they will tell you that the prime minister and this government is still suffering from the unending pessimism that has pervaded our national consciousness; the sense politics doesn’t work for working people and the government is not on their side.

Read more from Sky News:
Analysis: PM’s authority damaged
Numbers behind housing pledge
Fiscal rules are silly but important

Starmer knows what he needs to do: restore the social contract, so if you work hard you should get on in life. The spending review and its massive capital investment, the industrial strategy and strategic defence review – three pieces of work dedicated to investment and job creation – are all geared to trying to rebuild the country and give people a brighter future.

But equally, government has been, admit insiders, harder than they thought as they grapple with multiple crises facing the country – be that public services, prisons, welfare.

It has also lacked direction. Sir Keir would do well to focus on following his Northern Star. I think he has one – to give working people a better life and ordinary people the chance to fulfil their potential.

But somehow, the prime minister is failing to articulate his mission, and he knows that. When I asked him at the G7 summit in Canada what his biggest mistake of the first year was, he told me: “We haven’t always told our story as well as we should.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Beth Rigby asks the PM to reflect on a year in office

I go back to the Keir Starmer of July 5 2024. He came in on a landslide, he promised to change the country, he spoke of the lack of trust and the need to prove to the public that the government could make their lives better through actions not words.

In this second year, he is betting that the legislation he has passed and strategies he has launched will drive that process of change, and in doing so, build back belief.

But it is equally true that his task has become harder these past few weeks. He has spilled so much blood over welfare for so little gain, his first task is to reset the operation to better manage the party and rebuild support.

But bigger than that, he needs to find a way to not just tell his government’s story but sell his government’s story. He has four years left.

Continue Reading

Politics

Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

Published

on

By

Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

Sir Keir Starmer wanted to be talking about what he sees as Labour’s achievements after 12 months in government and his 10-year plan for the NHS.

But, after another dramatic policy U-turn and the sight of his own chancellor crying at PMQs, when he kept his support for her slightly vague, Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson discuss if his start in office has been shattered by this week.

They also wonder if the solution to make relations with his own MPs a bit easier would be to make better use of Angela Rayner.

Remember, you can also watch us on YouTube.

Continue Reading

Trending