Sue gray

It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is to blame for the government’s ails, now it is the turn of her son to face the wrath of Fleet Street. Liam Conlon, who was elected last month as the MP for Beckenham and Penge, has quickly been earmarked as one to watch. Within days of his election, he was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. Talk about a rapid rise: perhaps he knows someone at the top? Unfortunately for Conlon, his new appointment has landed him in a spot of

At 8.30 a.m. each morning, Keir Starmer holds a meeting with his inner circle to go over the business of the day. Once, these meetings were mainly filled with unelected aides, but now they are attended by senior shadow ministers, such as Labour’s campaign co-ordinator and Blairite old-timer Pat McFadden or the shadow cabinet office minister and Brown-ite Jonathan Ashworth. Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, may drop in too. If Rachel Reeves can’t make it, one of her shadow treasury aides goes in her place. The new setup is one of the many measures Sue Gray has brought in since she was appointed Starmer’s chief of staff a year ago. Her

An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown social events included in the Sue Gray report were so dull as to be almost exculpatory: staid gatherings of half a dozen people around a long table with sandwiches still in their boxes, apple juice poured into a whisky glass. Far worse happened in No. 10 but Gray did not publish those photos or look into (for example) the ‘Abba’ party in the No. 10 flat, saying she felt it inappropriate to do so while police were investigating. Luckily for Johnson. The more damaging material came from the emails intercepted, with No. 10 staff being clear

Politics’ longest-running farce is at a close. Sue Gray, that pillar of Whitehall officialdom, has today delivered her report into whether Boris Johnson did indeed break lockdown rules during the pandemic. And while there will no doubt be some relief for those in No. 10 that Gray’s inquiries didn’t investigate any further parties to those previously reported, some of the details contained in her findings do make for excruciating reading. Below are six of the lowlights from the Sue Gray report…. 1. The Met torpedoed Gray’s probe Few institutions emerge well from partygate but the Metropolitan Police probably came out worst. Constantly derided for being too opaque, too slow to act

In answers to questions following his statement in the Commons on Monday, Boris Johnson let drop an interesting statistic. He said that, ‘on busy days’, more than 400 officials work in 10 Downing Street. This figure explains a lot — why so many staff there got Covid, why, after long hours in overcrowded conditions, they might want to open bottles of wine, why factions struggle for mastery and leak against each other, and why the heart of government suffers from clogged arteries. With 400 rabbits in that warren, how can most of them know the Prime Minister personally, how can they feel much esprit de corps? The numbers are four

Conservative sympathisers, Conservative voters and Conservative parliamentarians have a simple choice to make this week. Do they stand by a Prime Minister who besmirches his office and whose moral credibility diminishes a little more each day he remains, squatting, in Downing Street? Or do they, instead, accept the obvious reality that Johnson is not fit for the office he holds, draw the obvious conclusions from that recognition, and do the decent thing? For every Tory MP and cabinet minister who fails to act this week deserves to be judged themselves. These MPs might be weak or venal or cowardly or blind or simply stupid but they cannot claim to be

After Tory MPs spent the afternoon laying into Boris Johnson over Sue Gray’s summary of her report, the Prime Minister finds himself in a much more fragile position than when he started the day. Tonight he addressed Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee. Given Johnson’s Commons appearance rattled MPs rather than improving relations, Johnson went into the meeting on the backfoot. The demand to hear the PM speak was so great that MPs arriving late were turned away. The demand to hear the PM speak was so great that MPs arriving late were turned away Johnson began the meeting by telling MPs he had a really torrid