Sue Gray was “always a goner,” Boris Johnson claimed after she quit her role as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief-of-staff.
The former Prime Minister, whose premiership was overshadowed by the “partygate scandal” and the report by Ms Gray into it, added that the top civil servant “knows where the bodies are buried” in government and Whitehall.
Sir Keir has replaced Ms Gray in the top No10 post with Labour’s election campaign mastermind Morgan McSweeney.
Speaking on LBC Radio, Mr Johnson said: “I thought that it was Chronicle of a Death Foretold, really, because I think that this… she was always a goner.”
He added: “The interesting thing about Sue is that she spent a long time in the heart of Whitehall, kind of clearing up all the sort of propriety and ethics stuff… so I think she knows where the bodies are buried, and so I think she's been able to parlay that very useful knowledge into the position she had held until, until just now.”
Earlier, Labour frontbencher John Healey has denied that Ms Gray was forced out of her senior Downing Street job, or that the Government is disunited and distracted by bickering in its first 100 days.
The defence secretary was the first Cabinet member to comment after Ms Gray’s shock announcement that she is quitting the role of chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, following weeks of feuding inside No10 ever since Labour’s election win in July.
Mr Healey praised her “massive contribution” in drawing from her decades in the Civil Service to prime Labour for office, and said “sadly it’s nothing new” to see a senior aide become “a lightning rod for criticism”.
He praised her replacement - Mr McSweeney - for having “a strong track record” and who “was at the heart of what was an historic election win for the party”.
But he repeatedly refused when asked on Times Radio whether Mr McSweeney will be paid more than Sir Keir, after the revelation last month that Ms Gray was on a salary of £170,000 as chief of staff - £3,000 more than the PM.
Interviewed on LBC, Mr Healey was pressed on whether Ms Gray will receive a salary in her new role of Sir Keir’s envoy to UK regions and nations, and whether she will be elevated to the House of Lords.
“None of those are decisions for me. The question for today is she has stepped aside,” he said.
“I respect that decision. She said she'd become a distraction from the Government's work to deliver the change the country voted us to do. That is continuing this week, next week.
“And before the end of the month, you'll also see a Budget in which we'll deal with the shocking black hole that the last government has left in the public finances.”
However, Labour was criticised by Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell for leaving too long a gap between the election and the upcoming budget presentation by Chancellor Rachel Reeves on October 30.
He noted that Geoffrey Howe’s first budget for Margaret Thatcher came five weeks after the 1979 election, Gordon Brown’s in 1997 under Sir Tony was eight weeks after the election, and the first budget from David Cameron and George Osborne in 2010 was six weeks later.
“We're having to wait almost 16 weeks since the election, and I think that is what creates this sense of people not being quite sure what the government's about,” Mr Campbell said, stressing that the first budget does more than anything else to define a new administration.
But Mr Healey retorted: “We saw with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, what happens when you try and rush a budget.”
Denying that bickering over Ms Gray had overshadowed Labour’s first 100 days, the defence minister told BBC Breakfast that Sir Keir’s top team was “the most unified Cabinet that I’ve ever served in”.
He ticked off a series of measures from Labour’s three months in office including new agencies for UK energy, border command and the armed forces along with ending strikes by NHS doctors and legislating on workers’ rights and to renationalise the railways.
