Journey from respected arbiter to scapegoat

Sue Gray, who had been Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff both as Leader of the Opposition and for his first 93 days as Prime Minister, has resigned from that role and will become the PM's "Envoy for the nations and regions."

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she has been forced out as a scapegoat for the fact that after promising and end to "Tory psychodrama" it has been replaced with Labour psychodrama and some vicious infighting within the new government.

Sue Gray made her name as one of the key arbiters of government ethics in the civil service, and she continued to enjoy a great deal of respect throughout the political spectrum, even after her damning report on the former Prime Minister (except among his most partisan supporters, anyway) until the second it was announced that she was moving from a post requiring the strictest of impartiality to become chief of staff of a political party. 

At the point when it was announced that Sue Gray had accepted the appointment working from Sir Keir her reputation changed in an instant from being an almost universally respected figure to a controversial one.

I have not changed my opinion about that appointment which I blogged about the week it was announced. You can read that opinion, and indeed the views of a number of other people both for and against it, by clicking on the link immediately below to that post:

On the appointment of Sue Gray (chris4copeland.blogspot.com)

But while I consider that it was a mistake, a very surprising one from an expert in Civil Service and government ethics, for Sue Gray to have accepted the appointment in the way and at the time she did, and she had undoubtedly been at the centre of a lot of controversy and faction fighting, I get the impression that she was also the victim of some pretty unedifying dirty tricks from within the Labour government.

Ms Gray has effectively been sacked to make the PM look tough and to shift the blame for things which were not remotely her fault - like the fact that he and people close to him have been acting in exactly the way they spent the last fourteen years criticising Conservatives for and have been called out for this hypocrisy.