When Keir Starmer offered the role of chief of staff to Sue Gray, the senior civil servant who oversaw the partygate inquiry, he craved an organiser on his inner team who understood the interlocking levers of Whitehall — and the pitfalls of operating them.
The “exam question” was how to ensure that an Opposition lacking match practice in the practice of power would not be caught ill-prepared if Labour were to win the next election. Gray’s forthright advice was to move at least a year beforehand and assemble a team Starmer would be happy to govern with any time an election was called.
