09.03.2023

Made for each other

Kevin Bean looks beyond Tory faux outrage about Sir Keir appointing Sue Gray as chief-of-staff, and asks what it means for the prospects of the official left

When the news broke that Sue Gray - author of the report into Boris Johnson and ‘Partygate’ - was to be appointed Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, most of the attention was on the alleged impropriety of a senior civil servant leaving government service and going directly to work for the leader of the opposition. Tory backbenchers and editorials thundered about a ‘constitutional crisis’ and the threat that Ms Gray’s proposed appointment presented to the ‘political neutrality’ of the civil service.

Boris Johnson’s dwindling band of followers joined in the debate on less elevated terms, suggesting that consequently the Gray Report was fundamentally flawed, and its findings should now be disregarded because of its author’s political affiliations. Moreover, there were even darker suggestions that because of Sue Gray’s ‘close personal relationship’ with Sir Keir, the revelations about Johnson’s behaviour during the lockdown were part of a much larger leftwing conspiracy to bring down the former Tory leader and install a more pliant character in Downing Street. So, for these Tories, within a matter of a few months Sue Gray had gone from an absolute pillar of probity and impartiality (remember the refrain by beleaguered Tory ministers responding to the media about ‘Partygate’- “Wait for the Sue Gray report”) to a partisan conspirator in league with the opposition.

Background

Leaving aside these pompous parliamentary debates and the desperate attempts by the Boris Johnson fan club to blacken Ms Gray’s previously unblemished character, the proposed appointment of a permanent secretary to an important position in the Labour Party is significant, but not for the reasons put forward in the Commons or by the Tory-supporting media. The initial description of Sue Gray presented by the Tories during the furore over Partygate was broadly accurate. Although her background and career trajectory in the civil service was not that of the standard Whitehall mandarin - working class, state Catholic school and direct entry into the lowest level of the service, as opposed to the usual upper middle class, privately educated and Oxbridge route - she has indeed proven to be a consistent and loyal servant of the state.

Far from being an unconventional rebel, she seems to be very much the safe pair of hands who could be relied upon to do the job the system required. Why else had she risen to the senior levels of the civil service and why else has she been chosen to investigate the allegations against Boris Johnson? Despite the current attacks on her partiality, it seems that Johnson himself was more than pleased with both the tone and findings of her report: indeed, there was a widespread feeling that Gray had actually pulled her punches and provided some cover for the government. So, whatever the confected outcry from the back benches, there is little evidence here of a leftwing sleeper flouting convention and determined to undermine the status quo.

However, if we look beyond the faux outrage and constitutional verbiage spouted by the Tories, more important issues for the Labour movement are raised by the proposed appointment of Gray to a senior position in the Labour Party. Some on the left have suggested that, if anyone should express outrage at Ms Gray’s putative new job, it is the activists of the party itself: how can a senior cabinet office official become an apparatchik in the office of Keir Starmer? Is it not impossible to expect that someone who has served the state and the Tories at such a senior level should be loyal to the interests of the labour movement, as this argument seems to suggest?¹

On the contrary, Gray’s new role sits perfectly with Sir Keir Starmer’s political strategy and is a key part of his preparations for government. As the Tories have sunk deeper into the mire and fallen further behind in the opinion polls, Starmer’s whole strategy has been one of reassuring the capitalist class at home and abroad that he is an utterly reliable captain of the second eleven, who can become prime minister and do whatever is required to uphold the status quo. Given Sir Keir’s career at the heart of the legal and political establishment and the bourgeois state, no-one could mistake him for any sort of threat to capitalism (his youthful flirtation with Pabloite Trotskyism notwithstanding).

For their own electoral purposes the Tories will play up the supposed threat a Starmer government might pose, say, to Brexit or its ‘softness’ on migrants or ‘law and order’, but they do not see Labour under his leadership as really posing any kind of threat to the existing system. However, after the shock of Corbynism, the Labour leadership has had to work its ticket back with the bourgeois order and prove that it could be relied on. Hence the widespread purge of the left, hence the smears and downright lies about anti-Semitism and hence the suppression of democracy and the silencing of any opposition in the party. So, in this context, far from being a wild-card appointment, Sue Gray’s proposed role as chief of staff, and thus a potentially important figure in a future Starmer government, makes perfect sense. Indeed Sir Keir and Ms Gray are made for each other.

Recycling liars

Sue Gray is only one of several recent recruits that are gathering around Sir Keir. His charm offensive, directed towards big business, is starting to pay off, as the election approaches.² Familiar figures from the Blair era, such as Lord Mandelson, are playing an important role behind the scenes in preparing for government. The policies adopted by Starmer - from his strategy for ‘kick-starting economic growth’ through to his full support for Nato in Ukraine - have won significant support and praise in the bourgeois media for their ‘responsibility’ and ‘seriousness’. Meanwhile, think tanks and lobbyists cosy up to shadow ministers, hoping to influence the policies of what most now expect will be the odds-on favourite to be the winners of the next general election.

Other figures are also seeking out the Labour limelight: two former Labour MPs, Luciana Berger and Mike Gapes, who left the party and stood against it in the 2019 general election, have reapplied to join and have been given a very well-publicised warm welcome back by Sir Keir. In the case of Ms Berger, her return was especially high-profile and stage-managed to demonstrate that Starmer and the pro-capitalist Labour right were firmly back in control again. As shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves gushed about the return of “her good friend Luciana Berger”, it “shows we have got our party back!”³ It also shows that we will continue to be treated to the deliberate lies about the thuggery and anti-Semitism within her Constituency Labour Party, which she alleges ‘forced her out of the party’! Having established these lies as ‘the truth’, it is a weapon that the Labour leadership will not be giving up any time soon, as it continues to suppress any opposition on the left.

The response of the official left has been the usual cowed mutterings. There has been barely a peep about Sir Keir’s new chief of staff and nothing at all on the readmission of Berger and Gapes. Given the treacherous role that Corbyn, McDonnell and the leadership of the Socialist Campaign Group played in throwing comrades to the wolves at the height of the witch-hunt - and continue to play in keeping their heads down - we should expect nothing more. Sadly, many on the Labour left and beyond still do have hopes that the worms of the SCG will turn around or that Corbyn will stand as an independent in Islington North, now that Starmer has made it plain he is disbarred from the selection process. Futile dreams and imaginings!

The SCG’s whole perspective is tied to continued membership of the Labour Party as a means to implement the modest reforms its members understand as ‘socialism’. They are organisationally and politically bound hand and foot to the Labour right. Their careers demand that they stay with Labour at all costs, which means they are not going anywhere. Although Corbyn is effectively outside the party, he is objectively in the same position as the SCG: even if he does stand against an official Labour candidate, his politics are entirely Labourite. He is not going to lead anything or anybody anywhere - except further up the garden path of nebulous movements and ‘new initiatives’ for peace and justice.