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Londoner’s Diary
The Prime Minister’s top adviser, Sue Gray, has declared open hostilities with photographers based outside 10 Downing Street this week. An aide was sent out onto the street on Monday to tell a huddle of regular snappers to refrain from taking pictures of her as she comes and goes from her place of work.
The PM’s chief of staff was apparently peeved when pap shots of her entering No 10 wearing a jazzy outfit resembling pyjamas ended up in the Daily Mail last month. The photos of Gray ran in the tabloid under the headline: “Sue, you work for the Labour Party… not the pyjama party!”
“It is the first case of anyone complaining from No 10 that I’ve heard of,” said photographer Steve Back, aka Political Pictures, who is regularly stationed in the street. Back is renowned for getting close-up shots of confidential documents being carelessly displayed by various ministers as they walk into No 10. Other paps told us that Gray has started using a more discreet route into No 10 via the Cabinet Office entrance on Whitehall. They suspect she is trying to avoid their prying lenses.
Back and his fellow Downing Street paps have become an institution in their own right. Thanks to them, there is now a sign inside No 10 that reads: “Please remember. You may be photographed. Please cover any documents you may be holding.” In 2009, Back triggered the resignation of a senior counter-terror officer after he snapped him entering Downing Street with a sheaf of top-secret documents. He calls this “old-fashioned journalism”.
Gray, a former senior civil servant, now finds herself in the public eye after years working behind the scenes under a succession of governments of all parties. After completing the Partygate probe under Boris Johnson, which damned “a serious failure” of standards during the Covid-19 pandemic, Gray shocked Westminster in 2023 by defecting to the Labour party for a top job on Sir Keir Starmer’s team. Gray’s son Liam Conlon was elected as the Labour MP for Beckenham and Penge last month.
