‘Grown up’ Sue Gray is looking like a political ingenue

Sue Gray awarding herself a more generous salary than the Prime Minister’s betrays a high-handed and naive approach to politics, says Eliot Wilson

When the BBC revealed last week that Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, earned more than her boss, the story developed in a number of different ways. Some felt that her salary of £170,000 – £3,000 more than Sir Keir Starmer’s – was excessive and undeserved. A doughty band of keyboard warriors instantly punched back at the BBC for “targeting” Gray, though I doubt anyone who has met her would suggest she needs protecting. Others reflected that it demonstrated the Prime Minister is underpaid.

I know I am in a minority, but I agree with the last argument: I think our politicians are underpaid. The Prime Minister earns £167,000 for running the country, a role of unremitting, crushing responsibility, offering very little respite and often wreaking havoc on family lives. It is a comfortable salary, but newly qualified solicitors in City law firms can match it.

It is also true that some (though by no means all) civil servants earn less in Whitehall than they might in the private sector. But that will always be the case: government will never be able to match banks, law firms and consultancies. In principle, Gray’s salary is entirely justifiable. Running Downing Street well is vital and difficult. The first person to do the job in its current form was Jonathan Powell, Sir Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1997 to 2007. Powell – like Gray, a former civil servant – was an eerily brilliant fixer, able to manage complex administrative issues and give invaluable advice on policy.

None of these is really the most significant aspect of the story, however. What the brouhaha over Gray’s remuneration reveals is a Downing Street operation which is alarmingly dysfunctional.

First there is a sense of high-handedness. Starmer recently signed off on a review of pay for special advisers which raised the salary ceiling substantially, allowing Gray to be awarded her current rate. Her predecessor, Liam (now Lord) Booth-Smith was in Pay Band 4, which until the changes covered £140,000-£144,999.

This comes at the same time as many newly appointed special advisers are deeply unhappy about salaries, to the extent that many have joined the FDA, the trade union for senior civil servants. In the words of one adviser, “It’s bizarre, I’m working harder than ever in a more important job and they want to pay me less than the Labour Party was paying me when it was broke.”

‘Fighting friends she hasn’t made yet’

This feeds into a persistent narrative that Gray’s conduct as Downing Street chief of staff has been divisive and antagonised civil servants and political advisers needlessly. One Labour official told The Times that she was “fighting with friends she’s not made yet”. It follows suggestions that she has sought to control access to Starmer and that her insistence on signing off ministerial and other appointments personally slowed the process of constructing the new government.

The third element of the affair is Downing Street’s consistently poor media handling. Almost every crisis which has erupted – undeclared gifts of clothing to Lady Starmer, the Prime Minister’s fondness for corporate hospitality at football matches, the unusual granting of a Downing Street pass to donor Lord Alli – has been dismissed as a non-story or only grudgingly explained.

Government sources insisted that the restructuring of pay was carried out by officials, and that Gray is not at the top of the new highest band for special advisers. The comms genius who thinks that “Just think how much we could have paid her!” is a good defence should be rethinking his or her career choices. This political tin ear was encapsulated by a “senior Labour source” who remarked sourly to one journalist, “Sue Gray is the only pensioner better off under Labour”.

It is superficial and snide to link means testing of winter fuel payments with Sue Gray’s salary. But she has been around Whitehall for nearly 50 years and is no ingenue. She and those around her know how the media operate, and they should know, too, that the public mood at the moment is impatient, tetchy and distrustful.

Labour has been in office for 11 weeks yet is demonstrating a mindset which is impatient of criticism, lacking in empathy and judgement, and showing an air of entitlement. Starmer and Gray were presented as the grown-ups in the room. Leaks, anonymous anger, poor political judgement and clumsy communications suggest there is still some maturing needed.

Eliot Wilson is a writer