Recently, after weeks of turmoil behind the scenes in Downing Street, Sue Gray was removed as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and appointed envoy for the nations and regions, Her role is yet to be publicly defined, in Westminster however it is thought that she will focus on keeping the UK together and devolution in check. .as far as we know, no such appointment has ever existed before. But, then, until very recently, the direction of travel when it came to devolution was that it was inevitably in the direction of greater independence. The same was true of ‘the regions’ (whatever that term means): powers were being devolved.
However, the signalling now is that Sue Gray has been appointed to deliver bad news. Starmer is a total wimp and very obviously not inclined to stand up to anyone. So, as a sop to the sacked Gray, he has appointed her to take out his message to what I suspect he thinks to be the ‘provinces’ so that she might tell them two things. The first is not to argue with London. The second is to keep paying the taxes demanded. Such was the role of a Roman governor of old. The task of Sue Gray will be to say something very similar.
It probably never occurred to Starmer to ask the ‘nations and the regions’ whether they wanted an envoy, or whether they had an opinion on who that envoy might be. Instead, Starmer has just foisted the failed Sue Gray on them. If Starmer wanted to alienate Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland at the same time, this is how to do it. This man really is incompetent. Maybe the nations and regions should appoint envoys to send that message to him.
Gray has also sparked furious rows in the party due to her £170,000 a year salary, as Gray was given a pay rise after the election, despite other political special advisers being unhappy that their salary was reduced compared with their previous jobs at the Labour party.
The Labour party day by day are turning into our worst nightmare ” because in fewer than 100 days Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Government has been thrown into chaos – he has lost his chief of staff who has been at the centre of the scandal the Labour Party has been engulfed by. It’s also important to recall that Simon Case, the head of the civil service, also resigned within the last week, supposedly on health grounds. To lose two is not careless: it says something deeply uncomfortable about the boss. In this case, I think the message is clear: he’s not up to the job.
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