After Sue Gray’s departure, Sir Keir Starmer and his team have a serious stabilisation job to do
You might not know who the people are, or what they do behind the big black door of Number 10, but what just happened in the bowels of Downing Street is a big moment.
After getting off to a pretty dreadful start in government, Sir Keir Starmer has moved to get a grip of his operation on the eve of his first 100 days.
Amid the rows over freebie-gate, the endless briefings against the prime minister’s chief of staff Sue Gray – which spoke to wider dysfunction in Number 10 – Sir Keir has not got off to the start he would have wanted after a slick and effective election campaign.
“Keir Starmer is quite patient,” explains one insider on the changes announced on Sunday. “He expected teething difficulties, but wants to make sure Number 10 is completely refocused ahead of the first 100 days.”
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A leader who can at times seem ponderous, on Sunday his ruthless streak was on display once more, as he eased out Ms Gray and replaced her with his former chief of staff and head of political strategy Morgan McSweeney.
“What you have seen here is a PM that wants to get a grip of things and that is what this change is about.”
The move was part of a bigger effort to beef up Number 10 operations, amid horror that the effectiveness of the election campaign – run by Mr McSweeney – had given way to a rather floundering Downing Street operation.
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“Sue realised she had to move, it’s been a mess,” said another staffer who told me the conversations began last week and that Ms Gray and the prime minister decided that she should step down from the role by “mutual consent”.
She will take on the role as the prime minister’s envoy for the nations and regions.
There had been two power bases in Number 10: Ms Gray had been brought in by Sir Keir to deal with the transition to power, while Mr McSweeney had helped Sir Keir win the leadership and plotted his path to power.
While both sides played down talk of splits and divisions, there was growing unease in recent weeks around Ms Gray’s handling of the first 100 days in office, and her role as the prime minister’s enforcer, with Sir Keir deeply exposed in the rows over freebies-gate.
One insider told me: “A lot of the coverage of Sue Gray has been very unfair, she didn’t ask to be dragged into the public spotlight over Boris Johnson [Ms Gray led the investigation into partygate when a civil servant]. It became very hard of her to get out of the limelight and Sir Keir took this opportunity to sharpen up the operation.”
It’s not the first time Sir Keir has shaken up his office when he’s hit the buffers.
Back in 2021 when he lost the Hartlepool by-election, got trounced in the local elections and was in open war with Angela Rayner, Sir Keir shook up his top team, with his director of communications and other members of the press team standing down, while Morgan McSweeney was moved out of the chief of staff role and into director of campaigns.
But the prime minister will undoubtedly face criticism that he has bowed to “internal knifing”, as one senior Labour figure put it, which made his chief of staff’s position “untenable”. “The leakers won. That’s not good.”
Ms Gray was also credited by cabinet ministers I’ve spoken to as a good operator who helped join up departments and cabinet ministers when it came to the missions for Sir Keir’s government.
His aides hope the changes will beef up the operation amid criticism over the sharpness of the political operation around Sir Keir and the communications strategy, with Ms Gray and her team in control of the government grid of announcements.
Nin Pandit, former chief of staff of NHS England, has been appointed principal private secretary to the prime minister, while Mr McSweeney will have two deputy chiefs of staff, Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, who have been promoted from their roles as political director and head of government relations in Number 10.
Former journalist and now communications expert James Lyons is being brought in to strengthen the communications team.
That the prime minister has had to make these changes at all is a sign of how badly it has gone wrong in his first 100 days.
Elected on a landslide, he should have been firing ahead with his policy plans instead of being embroiled in political infighting, scandal and an overhaul of his Number 10 operation.
He and the refreshed team now have a serious stabilisation job to do.
In the face of growing tensions in the Middle East and the Budget on 30 October, it is the very opposite of what he needs.
But looking at the first 100 days, this is a prime minister who has probably concluded that things can only get better.
He now needs his team to pull together and prove him right.