Boris Johnson called the former top civil servant who oversaw the Partygate inquiry a “psycho”, according to the ex-No 10 communications chief.
Guto Harri revealed the ex-prime minister’s scathing views on Sue Gray – who resigned last month to take up a role with Labour as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
Mr Harri, director of communications under the former PM, has alleged that Mr Johnson “squared up to” King Charles in a “showdown” meeting over the government’s Rwanda policy.
He also claimed that Rishi Sunak would have been reshuffled out of the chancellor job if the ex-PM had stayed in office because of a major clash over the need for tax cuts.
Mr Harri lashed out at Ms Gray, accusing her of talking to Labour while still working on the Partygate report at the Cabinet Office – though he offered no evidence for the claim.
“[Mr Johnson] had respected her a lot, but by the time I got there I think understandably he was getting suspicious and by the end we were all extremely suspicious of this woman,” Mr Harri told LBC on Tuesday.
The ex-spin doctor added: “She wants to work for Keir Starmer. She must have been talking to him at the time when she was meant to deliver a quasi-judicial verdict on Boris Johnson.”
Questioning her impartiality while in a senior Whitehall role, Mr Harri pointed to advice received from Daniel Stilitz KC, believed to have been a Labour member until 2019.
“It turned out she was advised by a card-carrying Labour barrister who was on social media recruiting people to the Labour party,” he said, before saying she had a press officer who leaked details of the Partygate investigation.
“It took me weeks to realise where leaks were coming from … Journalists told me afterwards, ‘You got that guy moved, you destroyed a great source of stories for us’,” he said.
Asked how Mr Johnson described Ms Gray to him, Mr Harri plugged his coming podcast series and said: “One word that will be recurring in it – psycho Sue Gray, would be part of it.”
Labour has repeatedly denied the idea that the party approached Ms Gray about the job while she was working on the Partygate report, completed in May 2022.
A government inquiry into Ms Gray’s departure to join Labour has been paused after she refused to engage. But the FDA civil service union said she was prioritising the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba) probe over the Cabinet Office’s inquiry.
Meanwhile, Mr Harri has also alleged that Mr Johnson confronted Charles – “essentially squaring up” to him for reports remarks describing the Rwanda asylum policy as “appalling”.
Backing his former boss, he said: “They did have a bit of a showdown … So it wasn’t a fight. Obviously they didn’t square up to get in the ring. But Boris, rightly, challenged the unelected royal at the time.”
Asked about his claim that the King was “busted”, he said: “The impression I got is that Prince Charles at the time was squirming, trying to deny he’d said this … The fact that the story was allowed to stand and could not be denied meant that he had actually described government policy as appalling.”
Mr Harri also suggested that Mr Sunak would have been reshuffled out of the chancellor job if the ex-PM had stayed in office, saying that there was a “fundamental disagreement of policy between the two of them”.
Mr Harri said: “The tension between them was building. Boris was desperate to give something to the party, did not want to put up corporation tax. [Mr Sunak] didn’t want to cut taxes. He did want to bring the bread and butter benefits of Brexit to ordinary punters.”
“Rishi was reluctant to do all of that. So frankly, to cut to the chase, if things hadn’t turned out as they did last July, I think over the summer we’d have had a reshuffle and Rishi would have been offered a different job should we say.”
Asked if Mr Johnson was preparing to move Mr Sunak from the chancellor job, he said: “Yes. But the chancellor beat him to it in a way and brought the whole show down.”
Mr Johnson – booted out by his own party last summer – compared the Tory party to “Aztecs who had become addicted to killing each other”, Mr Harri claimed.
Defending the “heroic efforts” of his former boss, he said it was not realistic for Mr Johnson to return to power imminently, but suggested that there was a possibility it could happen after the next general election.
