Keir Starmer’s ex-chief of staff Sue Gray has given both barrels to her former colleagues in Number 10, claiming it was “unbearable” working in Starmer’s team and lamenting the briefings against her during her (brief) tenure in Downing Street. She told Ed Balls on the Political Currency podcast:
“Stories about supposedly trying to move Morgan McSweeney to the back of the building. Actually, that was a genuine … ‘I can’t believe so many of you are going to sit in this small room. Let’s find a better room for you.’ It just got to the point where you know everything you say, you feel somebody is recording it…
I talked to [Starmer] a couple of times about it, and I don’t really want to disclose individual conversations. But I was disappointed that not more was done because I think it could have been done… [the atmosphere was] definitely unbearable, particularly for me…”
Gray was one of the first major departures from Starmer’s catastrophic administration. She can probably take comfort in the fact that so many others followed…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”