Sue Gray Describes Working In Keir Starmer’s No.10 As ‘Unbearable’

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray has called the environment within No.10 “unbearable” in a new interview.

Gray, once the most powerful adviser within Downing Street, has spoken out with searing honesty about what has often been described as a “boys’ club” culture at the heart of the last government.

The former Starmer aide told the Political Currency podcast: “I was thrust into the limelight in a way I had never experienced.

“It was definitely unbearable, particularly for me, and it was just affecting me and my life.”

Gray, a Labour peer, was one of the first high-profile figures to leave Starmer’s side back in 2024 following a series of leaks about her salary exceeding his own and her supposedly turbulent relationship with colleagues.

A former civil servant, she was already well-known to the public for leading the partygate enquiry into Boris Johnson’s government before she was given a top job by Starmer.

She quit in October 2024, less than three months after Labour’s landslide election victory, claiming speculation around her had become a “distraction” for government.

Gray was replaced as chief of staff by Morgan McSweeney, often described as her arch-rival in No.10. He had to resign later over his role in helping appoint Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

Asked about speculation she tried to get McSweeney moved further away from the PM, Gray said: “I had always taken a view as a civil servant and actually as a special adviser that you should be able to speak freely in rooms … I couldn’t recall those sort of discussions being briefed out, and yet here I found myself.

“Stories about supposedly trying to move Morgan McSweeney to the back of the building. Actually, that was a genuine … ‘I can’t believe so many of you are going to sit in this small room. Let’s find a better room for you.’ It just got to the point where you know everything you say, you feel somebody is recording it.”

Asked if Starmer understood her fears about the briefings against her, she said: “I talked to him but I was disappointed. And I really believe that advisors should not be the story.”

She added that “none of that briefing came from me”.

When asked about what she thought had gone wrong with the last prime minister, Gray said: “I think government and opposition are very different, and I’m not sure I would say they shouldn’t have survived, but I do think that we needed bigger people, people with bigger experience to be heads of, whether it was comms or policy or strategy. Government is very, very different.”

Starmer has not given an interview since leaving office last month, but he said last year that he was “wrong” to give Gray the role.

He said: “Not everyone thought it was a good idea when I appointed her … It was my call, my judgement, my decision, and I got that wrong. Sue wasn’t the right person for this job.”

There has been speculation that Gray might be brought back into Burnham’s administration as an advisor.

However, she told the podcast she was enjoying life outside of government, though Gray added that she was “still taking part in many aspects of public life”.

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