Sue Gray: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appoints partygate investigator as new chief of staff

Published

2 years ago

March 2, 2023

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Sue Gray has been appointed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to serve as his chief of staff.

The senior civil servant became a household name during the partygate scandal, authoring the report which found “a failure of leadership and judgement” in Number 10 during Boris Johnson’s premiership.

She has left her role in the civil service ahead of taking up her new role.

It is not clear when Ms Gray will take on the role, as the appointment will need to be checked by the watchdog which oversees new jobs for former ministers and senior civil servants – the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA).

According to the ACOBA website, the body provides advice to the prime minister about appointments.

It will be up to Rishi Sunak to make a final decision on agreeing to the appointment.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party has offered Sue Gray the role of chief of staff to the leader of the opposition.

“We understand she hopes to accept the role subject to the normal procedures. Keir Starmer is delighted she is hoping to join our preparation for government and our mission to build a better Britain.”

Some in the Conservative Party are unhappy that a person they believe contributed to Boris Johnson’s downfall has been tapped for a job by the opposition party.

Johnson-era cabinet ministers, including Nadie Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrea Leadsom all registered their disappointment.

Ms Dorries said it showed the partygate report was a “stitch-up”, Mr Rees-Mogg said “so much for an independent Civil Service”, and Ms Leadsom said “surely not?”

Labour MP and former minister Ben Bradshaw – currently a shadow minister – said Ms Gray was “just as strict” when Labour was in government.

Ms Gray has long had a fearsome reputation in Whitehall, serving as the key enforcer of ministerial behaviour while head of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office between 2012 and 2018.

The possibility she could be appointed to the Labour leader’s office was first reported by Sky News on Wednesday.

Ms Gray is the daughter of Irish immigrants and her son Liam Conlon is the chair of Labour’s Irish Society – a group formerly led by Starmer’s director of communications, Matthew Doyle.

Ms Gray’s appointment follows the dismissal of Sam White, who served as Sir Keir’s chief of staff for a year but was unpopular with some of the shadow cabinet.

Allies of the Labour leader had said that due to the relative inexperience of his team, a candidate who understands how to operate at the top level of government is essential.

Ms Gray’s appointment echoes Tony Blair’s recruitment of diplomat Jonathan Powell while Labour was in opposition in 1995.

Mr Powell later became Number 10’s first chief of staff and played a role in Northern Ireland peace talks before the Good Friday Agreement.

A Labour source said: “[Sue Gray] knows how Number 10 works and she’s very popular with civil servants.”

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

12 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

12 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

12 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.