Sir Keir Starmer’s infamous chief of staff Sue Gray is on the receiving end of briefings this evening that she has left Labour staff “in tears” due to the way she’s conducting a leak inquiry.
The probe was sparked after details of an impending Labour u-turn over their flagship plans to spend £28 billion a year on green investment was leaked to the Guardian the evening before the plan was to be made public.
According to The Times, Labour staff have filed a complaint against Ms Gray’s handling of the leak inquiry, with accusations she failed to follow due process and violated workplace rights.
The Chief of Staff is accused of inspecting phones and conducting interviews without trade union representatives present.
According to this evening’s report, Ms Gray has now been forced to apologise to some of those affected by her tactics, with one claim that staff were left “in tears” by her “heavy-handedness”.
The Labour Party branch of the GMB union has now reportedly submitted a formal complaint about Ms Gray’s probe to the party’s General Secretary David Evans, and has sent an email to all Labour staff reminding them of their workplace rights during an investigation.
The row’s emergence has sparked questions about hostilities between Ms Gray and long-serving Labour officials. There are also suspicions Ms Gray’s allies may have been responsible for the leak.
She reportedly spent last week summoning staff into conversations and demanding information from them about the source of the story.
Ms Gray believes that the details of the leak could have only come from a small meeting in Parliament last week, at which she had been present.
It comes after weeks of growing tensions about Sue Gray’s influence in Sir Keir’s operation, with allegations she has been straying away from operational decisions and into questions of party strategy, not least during internal rows about whether to scrap the £28 billion green pledge.
The story also undermines the reported quote Ms Gray delivered to Labour staff upon taking the role after her time in the Civil Service.
She told Labour staff: “You had my back and I’ll have yours”.
Ms Gray is no stranger to leak inquiries, being largely responsible for them in Whitehall during her time as head of ethics at the Cabinet Office.
According to one report from January, Ms Gray had been leading the charge against junking the flagship green policy.
The Times claimed Ms Gray believed Sir Keir Starmer would be left looking “weak” were he to u-turn.
While it is not clear whether Sir Keir authorised the probe, a Labour spokesman has confirmed “there was an investigation last week”.
They would not comment on disciplinary matters, however.
