When Sue Gray resigned as the prime minister’s chief of staff last week, she said it was because she “risked becoming a distraction to the government’s vital work of change”. They always say something like that. Don’t become the story – that’s supposedly the rule for pretty much anyone other than the prime minister.
The prime minister is allowed to be the story, good or bad, because, by definition, what the prime minister does isn’t a distraction, it’s the thing itself. But anyone else can plead the blameless fact that they’re accidentally distracting everyone from more important things. “Talk of my private life”, “widespread press reports of my cronyism and embezzlement”, “my cut-price hair transplant that went hilariously wrong”, “the relentless clip-clop of my amazing shoes” – such things can become a distraction thanks to the silly media and their inability to just sit still and listen to the barrage of sensibleness that the government is trying to present.
It flatters the ego too, inadvertently being a distraction. “Oh I’m so sorry, everyone’s looking at me again – how regrettable and inappropriate.” “Oh dear, you’re all staring at me while poor Sir Ian McKellen is in a nightie at the front pretending to be King Lear. Stop it everyone! Look at Sir Ian! Would it help if I stood still? Honestly, you should really be listening to Sir Ian – he’s got a lot to say! Oh I’ll just go. I’m being a terribly watchable distraction. OK, I’m heading off stage. Don’t watch me. Keep your eyes on Sir Ian – that’s what I’ll be doing as I stand in the wings. Apologies if you hear me sneeze a few times.”
So Sue has headed off stage, milliseconds before the vaudeville hook would have dragged her there anyway. Well done her. Now we can all settle down to be scintillated by the next act: Sir Keir Starmer and his Vital Work of Change – in which Keir sculpts a lifesize statue of Clement Attlee entirely out of 2ps that have been contributed by Waheed Alli. It’s certainly worth an hour of your time.
Does it make sense, though? This notion that you shouldn’t become the story, that you mustn’t distract? I’m not sure. I think it might be all right sometimes for the story to be stuff that one member of the government team is doing – for there to be more than one point of focus – particularly when the prime minister is, as raconteurs go, somewhat on the dry side.
Admittedly, he said “sausages” instead of “hostages”, which was a brave attempt to lighten the mood surrounding that particular geopolitical shitstorm, but we can’t expect gold like that every week. Others have to step up. I sense Wes Streeting might be comfortable being the story now and again. Sue Gray herself has previously been the story, to a certain extent, back when she was compiling her report on all of Boris Johnson’s pandemic knees-ups. So I don’t think it’s a hard-and-fast rule. I reckon it might be OK to be the story, as long as the story about you isn’t that you’re shit at your job.
Of late, that was the story told about Sue Gray. It may not be a true story, of course. There are loads of people who speak warmly of her dedication, intelligence and dynamism, but fewer who’ll go on the record saying she’s had a great few months. A narrative has developed that the government has got off to a bad start and, if that’s true, it’s partly her fault. And, if it’s not true, it’s even more her fault for allowing that narrative to develop.
The Starmers’ little haul of freebies has been the opportunity for lots of vindictive noise from the rightwing press (but those guys are never going to vote Labour anyway), prompting a dutiful conniption fit from the left of the Labour party (but those guys basically always will). Some critics even seem to have constructed a rhetorical world in which the money Lady Starmer’s dresses cost would otherwise have gone towards some old ladies’ gas bills, which I’m pretty sure isn’t the economic reality.
But what was Sue Gray doing amid all this negativity? It depends who you ask. Desperately wrestling disparate bands of misogynistic mediocrities into some sort of coherent government, some would say. Trying to divert public money into a derelict Belfast sports stadium while preventing Starmer’s own team from having proper access to him, according to others. And all the while being paid at the rate of £170,000 a year, which we know thanks to a leak from one of the many insiders who now seem to hate her. So it hasn’t gone perfectly.
It seemed to me, from the start, that appointing the person most associated with Boris Johnson’s Partygate ignominy to an explicitly partisan Labour role was a colossally bad idea. The demolition of Johnson’s already teetering reputation was very good news for Labour. That development needs to be treasured. So don’t give Johnson the opportunity to claim that Gray’s report, and his consequent and utterly justified public condemnation, was a stitch-up by a Labour mole lurking in a lefty civil service, because he will take that opportunity.
For this reason, I would have thought that, of all the people on Earth to make Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray would be the one to avoid. I therefore assumed, naively it turns out, that since Starmer was surely aware of this huge downside, her gifts must have been unanswerably amazing. He must have felt that he simply had to have her in that job, that she alone could ensure his government’s success. If that’s the case, why has he let her go so easily?
Clearly, it wasn’t the case. While an obviously capable person, she has not succeeded in the role in the way Jonathan Powell did for Tony Blair. She didn’t master the job. Either Starmer hugely overestimated her ability, or he hugely underestimated the importance of not issuing Boris Johnson with a potential Get-Out-of-Disgrace-Free card. He screwed up. He’d better be careful he doesn’t become a distraction from himself.
