Starmer ‘aiming to hire Partygate chief’

SIR Keir Starmer wants the leading civil servant who investigated Partygate to join his top team, it was reported last night.

The Labour leader is hoping to recruit Cabinet Office enforcer Sue Gray as his new chief of staff, according to Sky News. He is known to be keen to have a civil servant with experience at the highest levels of Whitehall by his side as polls suggest he is set to become the next Prime Minister. Ms Gray, in her 60s, was drafted in to investigate lockdown-busting gatherings under then PM Boris Johnson in Downing Street.

Her initial report published last year blamed a ‘failure of leadership’. Labour insisted last night: ‘The process is ongoing. Nobody has been offered the job.’