With Labour’s post-election honeymoon period truly dead and buried, it feels like prime timing for the party’s annual conference this week in Liverpool. But, on such an important week for the party, and with the main man himself set to take to the stage on Tuesday, why is Sue Gray, his scandal-embroiled chief of staff, nowhere to be seen?
The stage is set here in Liverpool, with a packed-out conference hall and a lively exhibition room drawing in Labour members, councillors, delegates and MPs from across the country. The party’s annual conference has seemingly fell at just the right time this year, with a trying few weeks clearly marking the end of Starmer’s honeymoon period after just over two months in office.
With what feels like scandal after scandal, it’s clear some are beginning to wonder if anything has really changed at all, and when the entire premise of Labour’s landslide victory hinges on just that one word of ‘change’, that’s proving to be a very big issue. In fact, the latest Opinium poll has ranked Starmer’s popularity at -26% – one point lower than former PM, Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating.
Sue Gray, former civil servant and the PM’s current chief of staff, first rose to prominence for heading the Partygate investigations into Boris Johnson and his cabinet during the COVID-19 pandemic. She later left the civil service and joined Starmer’s team in September 2023. Recent reports placed Gray at the centre of some hefty controversy, after they revealed that she’d asked for – and been given – a whopping salary of £170,000, around £3,000 more than the PM himself. Sparking debate about whether such a large salary is deserved during such trying times, this discovery has left the country wondering whether Starmer really has enough power and control to be calling the shots.
That’s not all for Gray either, who’s also found herself caught up in the donations scandal, after it was revealed that she granted Labour peer, Lord Alli his all-access Downing Street pass shortly after he donated £10,000 to boost the election campaign of her son, the new MP for Beckenham and Penge, Liam Conlon. The pass has reportedly been retracted following heavy media scrutiny.
So, on the party’s biggest week, has Gray dodged of her own volition? Or has the PM asked her to keep her distance to avoid a media pile-on? It is claimed that her no-show was planned, giving her time to prepare for the UN General Assembly next week – but, as probably one of the most controversial figures in the Labour Party at present, her absence seems too well-timed to be a convenience coincidence.
