Despite the claims of one or two dwellers of our Comment section, I am aware that this website is not LabourList. We remain beadily focused on our fellow Tories, our travails, our leadership election, and our long, hard slog back into government. It is our raison d’être. Well, that and upstaging YouGov.
Nonetheless, it is a sad truth that, as vital as it is to cover Robert Jenrick’s latest video, Tom Tugendhat’s latest speech, or Kemi Badenoch’s latest Twitter imbroglio, Labour are in government, and we do need to pay them some attention – at least for five years. We may not be as steeped in the intricacies of party lore as our leftie counterparts, but we do offer the freshness of outsiders.
In this spirit, I have been intrigued in recent weeks by reports of tensions between Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney, respectively Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff and Head of Political Strategy. Are things already cracking up, only six weeks on from entering Downing Street? Or re-entering, in the case of the former Cabinet Office official and ethics supremo turned Partygate sleuth.
Gray has been accused of restricting officials’ access to the Prime Minister, asking for national security officials to speak to her before they get to Starmer. She reportedly suspects McSweeney is behind briefings against her and wants to use her “knowledge of Whitehall” to marginalise him. In turn, he is said to have had to move his desk away from Starmer’s twice already. The indignity!
The accusations fly. Spad and junior minister appointments are said to have been held up due to her involvement. She has been “acting like a Cabinet Secretary”, trying to stop McSweeney from gaining access to government IT systems, and “subverting Cabinet” over funding Casement Park.
Gray has ties to the Emerald Isle that go beyond dilapidated Gaelic football grounds. Not only is she a former Permanent Secretary of the province’s finance ministry, but she spent time there running a pub during the Troubles (!) Her family is Irish, her son – now an MP – has been the chair of the Labour Party Irish Society, and she was disappointed to miss out on the Executive’s top job.
She also may have been a spy. Even if she denies the rumour, it’s still no fun to wander into Agent Gray’s sights. As Andrew Gimson highlighted in his peerless and prescient profile of her, there’s a reason why Gray has attracted the sobriquet of “the most powerful woman in Britain”. Her all-encompassing ethics remit and particular patronage have made her seem like the Blob enfleshed.
Few are said to know Whitehall better than her. She not only knows where the bodies are buried but is responsible for quite a few of them. Simon Case is high on her list of targets, a festering bruise. But her top concern must be McSweeney. If I was him, I would be looking for alternate employment.
McSweeney grew up in Ireland, joined Labour over the Good Friday Agreement, and built up a reputation as a local government organiser. Having run Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign in 2015, he was frozen out under Jeremy Corbyn and set up Labour Together, the party-within-a-party from which Starmer’s successful leadership bid sprung. He is the archetypal backroom boy.
As the brain behind the three-stage process by which Starmer became Prime Minister – kick out the Corbynites, expose the Tories’ failures, and then sell Britain on Labour – McSweeney has been Starmer’s political guru. By contrast, Gray is a latecomer. Like Starmer, she is in her 60s, at her career’s end.
The division of labour between McSweeney and Gray would seem simple: he focuses on re-election, and she focuses on governing. But the tensions between the pair have been obvious since she was appointed last year. He might know how to win a council election in Lambeth. But she was working in the Cabinet Office whilst he was still an intern. Compared to her, he is a pygmy.
A pygmy? Seems unfair for a man who took his party from its worst defeat since 1935 to a 170-seat majority in a single election. But the more one contemplates Labour’s victory, the less impressive it seems. A record low vote share on a turnout of 60 per cent. Yes, 211 seats gained. But on an increase in vote share of only 2 per cent. Compare that to the Tory fall of 20 per cent.
McSweeney only achieved step one of his three-point plan. He took Labour back from the Corbynites and has frozen them out of the party hierarchy at various levels. But he didn’t expose Tory failures. We did that ourselves, with a little help from Gray, Liz Truss, and Nigel Farage. Britain wasn’t sold on Labour. They simply hated us. They will hate Labour too. They might already.
So McSweeney’s claims of being a political Svengali look a little hollow. If Labour had won 40+ per cent of the vote, reduced us to double digits, and ensured Starmer would occupy the political crease for a decade or more, the puff pieces would be justified. All seemed within reach. Instead, he looks like a b*llshit merchant who got lucky, now upstaged by someone that he hired.
This hardly surprises based on Gray’s career so far, and for anyone a little sceptical of the more lurid claims in some McSweeney profiles. As one ‘Labour veteran’ quoted by Kevin Maguire puts it, “She knows how government works and that is now nine-tenths of the job, so Gray will win”. Starmer has so far been preoccupied by crises. Party management seems so much less vital now.
In which case: how long can McSweeney last? How many more times can that desk be moved until it is out the Number 10 door? To whom is Starmer more loyal: the man who made him leader, or the woman who whispers sweet nothings into Whitehall’s ears? Will McSweeney last longer than Dominic Cummings? When will he want to start a Substack? What if Starmer is hit by a bus?
McSweeney can’t be considered too much of a threat to Gray’s campaign to empower stakeholders, disempower ministers, and take revenge on anyone who irritated her en route to power. He was once the pharaoh. Now Gray treats him as a temporary irritation. Did someone mention ethics?
Why should Tories be interested in his? Don’t we have enough of our own internal personal drama to be getting on with? Certainly. But we can draw two conclusions. First, that all that puff from lefties that political soap opera was over and the adults were back in charge was all the guff we expected. Secondly, that Gray is, as expected, the major force in government. A backlash looms.
ConservativeHome was one of the first outlets to bring Gray into the light. That is where she has chosen to stay. It isn’t her natural environment. But neither is it McSweeney’s. The two may iron out their differences, after these early teething troubles. But I think I’ve seen this play before.