Partygate inquisitor in line for Starmer job

Civil servant with dominant role in scandal inquiry tipped to be leader’s new chief of staff

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is considering appointing Sue Gray as his new chief of staff, according to reports. The well-respected senior civil servant – and inquisitor-in-chief of the partygate scandal – currently runs the Union and Constitution Directorate at the Cabinet Office. A Labour spokesman told Sky News nobody had yet been offered the job, which became vacant in the autumn after Sir Keir dismissed Sam White. Ms Gray declined to comment.

LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer is considering appointing Sue Gray as his new chief of staff, according to reports.

The well-respected senior civil servant – and inquisitor-in-chief of the partygate scandal – currently runs the Union and Constitution Directorate at the Cabinet Office.

A Labour spokesman told Sky News that nobody has yet been offered the position, which became vacant in the autumn after Sir Keir dismissed Sam White after a year in the role.

Ms Gray declined to comment. The civil servant delivered her longawaited report into the partygate scandal in May last year.

Ms Gray was freed to publish the findings of her investigation into the Downing Street parties after the Met Police completed its investigation into breaches of Covid restrictions.

Friends called her a “straight shooter” who would leave no stone unturned in getting to the truth about the various parties.

Ms Gray was previously directorgeneral, propriety and ethics, in the Cabinet Office, for six years.

She ran inquiries into “plebgate” – in which Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, was accused of insulting a police officer – and into allegations that Damian Green had used his parliamentary computer to access pornography. Mr Green, then deputy prime minister, was forced to resign.

Ms Gray has held senior civil service posts under a number of prime ministers, both Labour and Conservative, and has managed to keep politicians in the dark about her own political leanings.

In the late 1980s, Ms Gray briefly paused her Civil Service career to run The Cove Bar, a pub near Newry, Northern Ireland, close to the Irish border.

Ms Gray and her husband Bill Conlon, an acclaimed country and western singer, ran the pub for a number of years before she returned to the Civil Service, working across Whitehall in transport, health and work and pensions.

She then joined the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s.

She served in Northern Ireland as permanent secretary in Stormont’s department of finance, but was passed over for the top job of head of the Northern Ireland civil service in 2020.

In a rare interview, she told the BBC that she had “really wanted the job” but felt she had been passed over because “people may have thought that I perhaps was too much of a challenger, or a disruptor”.

She returned to the Cabinet Office in May 2021 to take up the post of second permanent secretary with the responsibility for the Union and Constitution.

A Labour spokesperson told Sky News in reference to the replacement of Sam White as chief of staff: “The process is ongoing.”