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POLITICS

Sue Gray gets warring Labour tribes to focus on glittering prize

Chief of staff hired amid controversy has cooled tensions, controlled negative briefings and helped party to focus on possible victory in the coming election

Sue Gray is said to have improved relations between key Labour figures including Sir Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham and Anas Sarwar
Sue Gray is said to have improved relations between key Labour figures including Sir Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham and Anas Sarwar
Matt Dathan
The Times

Sue Gray is an anomaly in the Labour Party. Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is universally liked and respected among employees, shadow ministers and the party’s regional mayors and, as a result, the former senior civil servant has succeeded in improving relations between factions that had been at war for years.

Why? Because, as a former civil servant, she is not tarnished by the internal tribalism that has torn Labour apart over the past two decades and prevented it from returning to power for 13 years.

“She talks to everyone, which is pretty rare in the Labour Party,” one senior official said. “And everyone gives her a fair hearing because they don’t have any preconditioned views about her, which again, is pretty rare.”

Another veteran said: “Keir was surrounded by people who have come through the party so there was a lot of factionalism. Sue rises above that and Keir deserves credit for making an excellent appointment. As leader you can’t dictate how your advisers behave. You need a chief of staff to be in complete control of them.”

Gray with Sir Keir Starmer in Westminster in the autumn. One veteran said that she rose above the factionalism that has riven Labour over the decades and that he deserved credit for appointing her
Gray with Sir Keir Starmer in Westminster in the autumn. One veteran said that she rose above the factionalism that has riven Labour over the decades and that he deserved credit for appointing her
THE MEGA AGENCY

One of her biggest successes, according to long-serving Labour figures, has been in improving relations between the key players who will define whether Labour succeeds or falls apart if and when it returns to government.

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Biggest among those achievements has been repairing relations between Starmer and Andy Burnham. Until very recently the mayor of Greater Manchester had regularly expressed his disgruntlement with the Labour leadership. He had expressed anger at being refused a slot to speak on the main Labour conference stage each year and repeatedly bemoaned the “negative briefing machine” against him emanating from Starmer’s office.

He blamed Starmer’s advisers — or as he described them, “unelected people in their twenties or thirties who think they know it all” — and said he became the victim of anonymous briefings whenever he tried to highlight the work he was doing in Manchester.

Those same advisers accused Burnham of being petty and overreacting to jokes in Starmer’s speeches.

Relations dipped to a new low after Starmer mocked Burnham’s past tendency to flip flop over policy and his apparent dislike of Westminster in a speech to journalists at Christmas drinks last year.

The Labour leader joked: “He got to see his boyhood team Argentina win the World Cup. It was a mixed bag because he also got to see his boyhood team France lose the final and his boyhood teams Morocco and Croatia lose in the semis. But Andy sadly can’t be with us tonight because he doesn’t know where Westminster is.”

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In May, he asked to be left alone in an interview on Times Radio. “Whenever I go out there with something positive, the negative Westminster briefing machine somehow flicks into gear,” he said. “All that I’d say is leave me alone.”

But far from leaving him alone, Gray has instigated regular meetings between him and Starmer. Weekly meetings between the two teams, sometimes including the men themselves, have significantly improved relations.

Relations with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, are said to have improved after a spate of briefing  against him which Burnham said sprang from young advisers in Starmer’s office
Relations with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, are said to have improved after a spate of briefing against him which Burnham said sprang from young advisers in Starmer’s office
PA

A source close to Burnham said: “It’s noticeable how different teams are talking to us more, whether that be education, the devolution team, transport and others. Those are happening in a way that they weren’t previously and it’s all happened since Sue came in.”

And it has delivered dividends. So much so that Burnham has even started to praise the Labour leader’s new-look team.

“There’s a real opportunity for an incoming Labour government to work in a way that we’ve never quite seen before,’ he said in a House Magazine interview last month.

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“The way Sue Gray has gone about working with us and discussing that opportunity with us is great.

“It’s really positive. I think Sue, given her civil service experience, understands the shortcomings of the way we’ve run the country. And that much is clear to me from working with her.”

Things have also improved with other regional mayors, including Sadiq Khan, whose relationship with Starmer was rocked by pressing ahead with the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (Ulez) despite the Labour leader urging him to “reflect” on the decision after the policy was blamed for defeat in the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election in July.

But Starmer’s aides insisted the pair only disagreed on the “specific issue” of Ulez and said there was a “good understanding” between them over wider policy issues. Khan’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza was seen as another potential flashpoint for relations, with one aide accusing the London mayor of “grandstanding” on the issue, but the pair are said to get on well personally and relations between the two offices are helped by the fact that some of the staff in each team are close friends.

However, relations between the Labour leadership and Mark Drakeford, first minister of Wales, were described as irrecoverable even before Drakeford announced he was stepping down this month due to a host of differences, including the Welsh government’s 20mph policy.

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Starmer’s relationship with Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is described as the best of the lot, despite the pair’s clear split in policy on self-identification for transgender people.

Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, is said to have the best relationship with Starmer of any powerful figure outside London despite their policy differences
Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, is said to have the best relationship with Starmer of any powerful figure outside London despite their policy differences
GETTY

Gray’s appointment sparked controversy in Whitehall due to her role in Boris Johnson’s downfall, having led the inquiry into Downing Street parties during the pandemic. A Cabinet investigation into the circumstances leading up to her appointment found she broke civil service rules by failing to declare talks with Starmer about becoming his chief of staff.

A separate inquiry by the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba) cleared her to to take up the role in September, following six months’ gardening leave. However, some in government had wanted her to be blocked from working for Labour for between one and two years, which would have meant she could not take up the role until after the general election.

One of those behind the appointment of Gray said improving relations with key players was one of the main goals of her recruitment. “It’s certainly true [that relations are better] and part of what we wanted Sue Gray to do was to help us prepare for government and having strong relations with Labour representatives across the country is part of that,” the senior official said.

Gray was also said to have been critical of the “spadocracy” both within government and the Labour party, a reference to the growing power of ministers’ special advisers.

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One shadow minister said: “Sue’s been great because she cuts through all the advisers and gets us all to meet, talk and give our own opinions on policy and strategy. There was so much frustration among us that we would just get slapped with a briefing page on what lines to say on air, decided by less experienced advisers who aren’t MPs.”

Another said: “I know I can pick up the phone to her any time and the other way around. There’s that ongoing dialogue that is essential for building a successful team.”

As a result, shadow ministerial teams are working much closer together and there are plans to start replicating the cabinet committees that operate in government on cross-cutting issues such as national security, labour workforce, migration policy, housing and energy.

There are still concerns that relations with regional leaders will be tested once again if and when Starmer wins the keys to No 10, which would be likely to put Labour in control of almost all significant elected posts in England and Wales for the first time.

Starmer is arguably less powerful than both Burnham and Khan at the moment and there will come times when their relations will be strained by the natural clashes between central and regional government, as the Conservatives experienced on countless occasions when Boris Johnson was mayor of London.

But officials on both sides of that divide believe the chances of their relations surviving the transition to power are infinitely better with Gray at the helm.

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