A 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.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more