There is a serious problem at 10 Downing Street, but it isn’t Sue Gray v Morgan McSweeney
Westminster is witnessing an outbreak of Torschlusspanik. The translation from German is “panic at the gate shutting”, commonly associated with age: the dread of missing opportunities that will never come again.
That might sound like a perverse anxiety to find around a new government basking in a glow of abundant potential. But this is also the moment when vague ambitions of opposition collide with hard choices. Informal networks are formalised, chains of command tighten. Unofficial relationships are mediated by officials. Gates close.
As the volume of urgent decisions increases, time feels scarcer and, in the inner sanctum of government, so does space. Everyone who has worked in No 10 agrees that it is a magnificent Georgian relic, ludicrously inappropriate for running a modern state. Business is done in ornate function rooms and converted cupboards. The labyrinth of stairwells and corridors is perfect for the dispersal of collegiate spirit and the cultivation of paranoia.
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, commented in his memoir that allocating desks in Downing Street was more fraught than negotiating peace in Northern Ireland. Influence is measured by proximity to the boss. Stories of disquiet on that front are already emerging from Keir Starmer’s administration.
It has been reported that Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, has ensured that Morgan McSweeney, the head of political strategy, be relocated further from the prime minister. It is alleged also that Gray has clashed with Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, over McSweeney’s access to a secure Whitehall computer system and, more generally, that she wields excessive control over meetings and appointments. Officials fret that vital government business is caught in a traffic jam outside Starmer’s office and that Gray’s desk is the roadblock.
Those frustrations are being narrated as a tale of rival power bases and a faultline that threatens seismic destabilisation of the regime.
McSweeney is a veteran operator of Labour machine politics, and is credited with masterminding a massive election victory. Gray is a former civil servant, hired relatively late on Starmer’s journey to Downing Street, who was tasked with bringing rigour to preparations for government. Winning campaigns and rolling out policy are different modes of politics that were relatively easy to separate in opposition. The McSweeney and Gray channels operated for the most part in silos, with occasional but manageable tension between them. The former had precedence at first because seizing power was a precondition for using it. When forming a government, there is a natural reversal. The question of how to deploy power in the present term supersedes the politics of securing a second one.
Senior Labour figures who know both of the prime minister’s two closest aides insist that reports of a schism are wildly overblown, born of speculation by people who underestimate their alignment in loyalty to the Starmer project.
No one can identify a significant divergence on matters of ideology or strategy. McSweeney is more attentive to the challenge of retaining former Conservative voters who might be lured away to rightwing populism, while Gray is more focused on delivery of the manifesto in Whitehall. But those are two sides of one Starmerite coin. The unifying belief is that competent government with results that are felt in voters’ pockets and visible in their communities is the only reliable