Keir Starmer has appointed Sue Gray as envoy to the nations and regions after her resignation as his chief of staff. What does that mean? And what is he thinking?
This is the audio version:
The transcript is:
What is an envoy to the nations and regions? I genuinely don't know, but Keir Starmer has appointed Sue Gray to this position.
Sue Gray is, of course, the former civil servant who Labour fought desperately to be appointed as its chief executive officer before the election and who Keir Starmer has now got rid of 100 days after the election because she and Labour's staff in the Number 10 Downing Street policy units clearly couldn't get on with each other.
The sop that she's been given is the status as Keir Starmer's ‘Envoy to the Nations and Regions'. As far as I can work out, this means that she's going to trot around Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland speaking on behalf of Keir Starmer. And she'll also do the same in the north of England and presumably in the southwest, and she might pop over here to East Anglia, where I'm recording as well. The only place where she doesn't seem to have a mission might be in the southeast of England.
Is that what Keir Starmer really thinks of the UK, is my question? Is he so London-centric and so determined to keep himself in London that he actually thinks he needs an emissary to go out and spread the word about the great and wondrous works that he is doing to the rest of the UK on his behalf as if, well, they wouldn't hear otherwise?
Maybe it is. But if that is what he thinks, there are serious issues to consider.
The first is, what does he think the role of MPs is? After all, everywhere to which he has now appointed an envoy has got an MP in Parliament. And that MP is perfectly capable, I would hope, of speaking up for the interests of their constituents, whether they are a Labour MP, and he appears to ignore them, or an MP from another party, who apparently he's not interested in at all.
Let's also be honest, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have governments. The devolved governments of these countries - because countries they are - do exist. They have been elected. They are perfectly capable of making their own representations to Parliament.
And they also have ministers responsible for each of these places. And there is therefore the basis of dialogue already in existence.
So, what is Sue Gray going to do? Is she just going to sit over and above these processes, ignore them, or take part in them? I genuinely don't know.
And also, around the country, in places as far apart as Bristol and Newcastle, there are mayors. And those mayors have the job of representing the people in the regions where they operate. Now, they aren't universal, and some of those mayors seem to me to be a bit irrelevant. The mayor for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough seems to me to be pretty daft, because Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have literally almost nothing to do with each other.
But whatever we look at, and whichever institution we look at, and whichever part of the UK we look at, there are perfectly effective mechanisms in place for representation and for sending messages to and from Westminster.
So, what is this all about, Keir Starmer? Is it just some sort of token gesture of an appointment to give to Sue Gray until such time as you can elevate her to the peers and get her off your hands altogether?
Or is this part of her termination package that she gets another job that makes it sound as if she's really important? Although I don't think anyone is going to be confused by that.
Or is it just that he really doesn't know that there is a world beyond the M25?
Of all those options, I suspect the last is the most likely to be true. This is a man who is Prime Minister of a United Kingdom, who very clearly does not understand that there are separate countries within it, and thinks he can send envoys to them to tell them to be good and to keep sending the taxes and who doesn't understand that he has also got people who live in areas very distinctly different from London inside England itself and who thinks that he can do much the same with them, telling them what he's doing and expecting them to listen, which is what, by and large, envoys do.
In that case, we have a Prime Minister who is even more out of touch with reality than I ever thought. And that's really worrying.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
You are right – all this solves is an internal political problem.
I wonder what sort of threat Gray is perceived as by Stymied?
If in doubt, create another layer of representation – at least it provides jobs for a selected group of the boys & girls to give fledgling politicians time to be groomed (or rather surveilled) for higher things (eg: the police & crime commissioners none of us wanted). Starmer has developed the idea, and managed to create representation without election, maybe we could replace elected MPs with 650 SElected “envoys”.
Small correction – Bristol tried 2 Mayor’s, then voted to scrap the idea. We do however still have a WECA regional mayor, Labour’s Dan Norris (& his dog), who is also a newly elected MP. No one round here has any idea what the point of the WECA mayor is for. His main responsibility is transport, and our buses are in a mess, with WECA mostly wringing their hands instead of using their powers to DO something. Mind you, Dan did try to spend £10,000 of our WECA money on a huge promotional wrap of him (& his dog) on one of our buses.
It’s heartening to see how easily the government can create jobs when they want to, even if they are the wrong jobs for the wrong people, in the wrong place. But CAN WE AFFORD IT?
“After all, everywhere to which he has now appointed an envoy has got an MP in Parliament. And that MP is perfectly capable, I would hope, of speaking up for the interests of their constituents”
“If in doubt, create another layer of representation”
MPs represent or should represent their constituents.
Sue Gray represents Keir Starmer and he is her only constituent.
I know nothing about the Sue Gray person and the articles I googles about her are “all over the place” as we say in the USA. Please spill some tea.
She’s a former civil servant, previously invisible until the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, who was due to lead an inquiry into “Partygate” (Downing St having v boozy parties during lockdown), had to recuse himself, because he too had had a party. Sue Gray then led the inquiry- which, eventually, led to PM Johnson’s resignation (along with several hundred other lies & gaffes he had been responsible for as the clown & buffoon that he is). Then Starmer headhunted her for Labour, and after election, as his “chief of staff”. (On a higher salary than the PM)
She then had a power struggle with the Labour Party “witch/Trot-finder in chief”, Morgan McSweeney, about who controlled access to the PM in Downing St. (arguments about whose desk went where), she lost, “resigned” from her £170k job, and had this “envoy” job invented for her (emoluments package unclear, as is her exit package from Downing St). Will that do?
Thanks!
Plus Gray left the government in central London for a while to run a bar in Northern Ireland, where she was born and partly raised. Mmm.
Her son, Liam Conlon, ran the Labour Irish Society and became an MP in July. A senior official of the local Labour Party is an executive of one of Waheed Ali’s firms.
It’s all rather imperialistic.
Someone should tell the tool(-maker’s son) the days of the British Empire are long gone.
In today’s Grauniad, Raphael Baer uses the formulation “envoy for…” ! Is this Baer trying to make some sort of benign sounding sense of the position? – or just a classic Grauniad misprint?
I also see that there is, as yet, no published info on whether this is a remunerated post – nor on the intial report that it is going to come with a peerage. I’d bet on the former since “a package” has reportedly been agreed after her fall/removal/resignation from her £170,000 former role. As to the peerage, I do hope they have decided on whether the hat will have ostrich feathers or be a simple solar topee.
Where is Noel Coward when we need him?
The title of this appointment is similar to the Treasury regarding its new Darlington complex as an “outpost”. I’ve got news for the London elite – we have electricity and the internet in the north of England too. Nothing will be achieved on so-called “levelling” up until the Westminster bubble is dismantled and real power spread to the regions
She is the thug enforcer.
The one to keep locals in line.
Her primary task will be to stop a further populist move for an independent Scotland.
She will make sure the Freeport’s are unhindered.
She knows all the dirty secrets having been the head mistress… and knows how to coerce.
She has history
Richard,
“…She has history”
I suspect Starmer hopes she HAS history. But only history.
Kicked off into the regions where she has limited, or no, influence. I can’t see her going down well in Scotland. Why would she? She’ll get short shrift in Yorkshire unless she has something to offer and she hasnae……. not a bean. Are Lancastrians and midlanders soft in the head? I don’t think so. What IS this sinecure about other than political expediency? Will no one (else) rid me of this turbulent priest? (Murder no longer being politically correct behaviour even in political circles.)
Can see the thinking here. By appointing a “bad-news” civil servant, Starmer thinks he’ll take the heat off his Chief Cockerel Murray in the Scotland Office.
I note, incidentally, that she’ll report to Pat McFadden not Starmer so he hopes to remove himself and the so-called Scottish Labour from more bad publicity with the Scottish voters with the Holyrood election coming up in 2026.
Here’s a response I submitted yesterday, but which seems to have gone AWOL in cyber space:
Richard asks (and answers) “What is an envoy to the nations and regions? I genuinely don’t know, but Keir Starmer has appointed Sue Gray to this position.”
UK citizens of everywhere except possibly London (and they’re unlikely to give a toss) share this viewpoint and I suspect that Starmer isn’t any the wiser either. One thing that is clear is that the Envoy appointment will duplicate existing roles and cost money, which raises another question: Has it been costed and approved by Reeves yet, and where is she going to get the money from? Fiscal Rules and doggerel must be obeyed, you know! Scotland’s share will doubtless get tucked away somewhere in GERS. It all smells of yet another example of Westminster Extractionism resulting from failure to understand how the economy actually works and how the population outside of Greater London live, work and think.
Other unstated issues include: Will the Envoy have departmental staff and if so how many and where will they be based? In the wake of Boris’s interview on LBC in which he names Sue Gray as the provider of the karaoke machine for the No.10 Lockdown parties, is there now a concerted effort by Westminster politicians to disgrace and dump Sue Gray?
I find it alarming that the UK increasingly models its politics on those of the USA right down to appointing self-obsessed men of enormous and ludicrous vanity to their highest office of state. The upside for the devolved nations is that their Overton Windows just keep getting nudged towards independence.
Apologies, Ken
I have no idea where that one went
It is not on the system