When an adviser becomes the story, Alastair Campbell once apocryphally said, they’ve got to go.
Sue Gray’s problem is she was a story before she was an adviser. A stunt hire. A political wheeze designed to make headlines.
The whole country knew who she was, and the partygate scandal she was asked to investigate. “Waiting for Sue Gray” became a meme.
And unfairly or otherwise, that’s a problem. It means that when people in government are unhappy, and they want to communicate that to journalists, Sue Gray is the lightning rod. It makes front pages because people know who she is. The same stories about less well-known colleagues would not make the same splash.
But this is tough for someone like Sue Gray, who by definition did not seek the limelight. You don’t become a civil servant to become famous. That decisions were made on her watch - notably her own pay being higher than the PM’s - don’t help.
Whatever her qualifications, she got the job in part because she was the story. How big a part has become clear - whatever it was Keir Starmer thought she could do, she couldn’t. Or wasn’t allowed to. And that became a bigger story.
The tricky business of hiring advisers has been in my mind because I’ve been reading Boris Johnson’s book, ahead of interviewing him on my 5 Live show. His own stunt hire - Dominic Cummings - figures relatively little in the book compared to his role in making and breaking Johnson’s premiership. But even he admits that he was bad at hiring aides, and it played a part in what went wrong.
The examples often cited of good chiefs of staff are Jonathan Powell (Blair) and Ed Llewellyn (Cameron). Both were anonymous in government, and still pretty much so now. Interestingly they were both core members of the leader’s team in opposition for a decent chunk of time. Work patterns, chains of command, trust, loyalty forged in opposition are hard to replicate when moving into No10 from the party already in government (see also May, Truss, Sunak).
I’m sure Cummings and Gray won’t appreciate the comparison. Both Johnson and Starmer know what it’s like to have their premiership rocked by Sue Gray, but that’s another story.
Listen to my interview with Boris Johnson on BBC Radio 5 Live from 3pm on Tuesday.
Thanks for the heads up.
I’ll make sure to avoid radio 5 on that day.
All this free publicity for charlatan Johnson is doing my head in.
MATT: Are there any good books by former No.10 Chiefs of Staff?