To Westminster, where more trouble is afoot. It now transpires the Prime Minister is paid less than, er, his own chief of staff. Sue Gray has once again made headlines after the Beeb revealed the former top civil servant has been given a salary of a whopping £170,000 – which is £3,000 more than the man in the top job. How curious…
Gray’s wage – higher than that of her Conservative predecessor Lord Booth-Smith, who earned between £140,000 and £145,000 a year – has sparked an uncomfortable row in government, with frustration amongst other advisers who believe they are being underpaid. According to the BBC, a number of staff members expected they would receive a pay rise on entering government after their work with the Labour party – only to find out they would be getting paid less, some learning of the contents of their finalised employment contract weeks after they had started working.
While some insist government pay is a civil servant issue, a number of advisers have directed their anger about the delay in the circulation of formal contracts towards Gray. One insider remarked to the Beeb that: ‘It was suggested that [Sue Gray] might want to go for a few thousand pound less than the prime minister to avoid this very story. She declined.’ Oo er. Someone else branded the wage ‘the highest ever special adviser salary in the history of special advisers’. Another launched into a more scathing attack, fuming:
It speaks to the dysfunctional way No10 is being run – no political judgement, an increasingly grand Sue who considers herself to be the Deputy Prime Minister, hence the salary and no other voice for the Prime Minister to hear as everything gets run through Sue.
And, on hearing the news, one senior Labour source told the Sunday Times’ Gabriel Pogrund: ‘Sue Gray is the only pensioner better off under Labour.’ Ouch. Talk about all guns blazing…
The revelation is the latest in a series of negative – and increasingly aggressive – briefings about Gray in recent months, after the political staffer ruffled feathers with entry to Downing Street with the PM in July. There are already whisperings that Gray and Morgan McSweeney, No. 10’s director of political strategy, don’t see eye to eye – or desk to desk, according to reports that Labour’s former campaign guru found his workspace had been shuffled further away from the PM’s office not once but twice in a fortnight. Sir Keir’s top staffer was reported to have annoyed colleagues further over funding plans for Ireland’s Casement Park stadium, being accused ‘subverting‘ cabinet. And Gray has even been implicated by some in the cronyism allegations that mired the government. Dear oh dear. She won’t be winning any popularity contests soon, eh?
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