Working in Keir Starmer’s No 10 ‘unbearable’, says Sue Gray

Former chief of staff tells of fears her conversations were being recorded and leaked to media by colleagues

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff has lifted the lid on how “unbearable” it was working in No 10, revealing she feared her conversations were being recorded by colleagues seeking to leak her remarks to the media.

Sue Gray, who was the most powerful adviser in Downing Street before her resignation in 2024, was highly critical of the working environment under Starmer, saying she was “disappointed” that he did not act on her concerns about staff briefing journalists against her.

In an interview with the Political Currency podcast, shared with the Guardian, she gave her first major analysis of the extreme tensions in the early days of Starmer’s operation, providing an insight into the culture of what has been called a “boys’ club” operating with Downing Street.

In the weeks before Gray quit, Starmer was accused of having lost control of his senior team after a series of acrimonious leaks to the media about his chief of staff’s pay being higher than that of the prime minister and her apparently difficult relationships with senior colleagues.

In relation to a story that she had tried to get Starmer’s other closest aide, Morgan McSweeney, moved further away from the prime minister, Gray told the podcast’s interviewer Ed Balls: “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 whether Starmer acted on her concerns, Gray said: “I talked to him a couple of times about it, and I don’t really want to disclose individual conversations. But I was disappointed that not more was done because I think it could have been done.”

She said the atmosphere in No 10 was “definitely unbearable, particularly for me”, adding: “I would say that none of that briefing came from me. I think it was very difficult, and it was just affecting me and my life … It was a very, very, very difficult period.”

Gray is the second senior woman from Starmer’s administration in recent weeks to have expressed frustration at his leadership.

Yvette Cooper, the health secretary under Burnham and the wife of Balls, gave an interview to the same podcast earlier this month accusing Keir Starmer’s No 10 of sidelining her during the launch of a key immigration policy when she was home secretary.

During his two years in Downing Street, Starmer oversaw a huge churn in his staff within No 10, with Gray lasting just four months in the job after working for him in opposition to prepare for government. She was replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who subsequently had to resign over his role in having appointed Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

Starmer has not given a big interview since being forced out of office by his MPs but he has previously said he was wrong to have appointed Gray, a former ethics chief and senior civil servant who carried out the Partygate inquiry for Boris Johnson, despite not wanting to have taken on that task.

Starmer allies have previously blamed Gray for failing to prepare adequately for government when she was put in charge of the first 100 days of power while Labour was still in opposition.

Gray defended her preparations, saying there was “a lot done” from working to restore British-Irish relationships, working with the European Commission and the US administration, and suggesting media announcements should have been for the media team. It has previously been reported that the communications team was not confirmed in jobs until the day Labour entered power in July 2024, and that preparations for government were split between planning for the key events of the first 100 days and day-to-day media operations.

Some of those who worked in Downing Street at the time say their recollections of the atmosphere differ from those of Gray. One senior female adviser from the time pushed back on the suggestion there was a culture of briefings against Gray, describing it as “precisely the kind of paranoia that, ironically, Sue herself brought into the building”.

“She was literally clapped in with genuine excitement about her experience. But she quickly undermined herself. It didn’t need to be this way, she wrote her own story,” she said.

Another former female adviser also disputed the idea there was a boys’ club: “Before Sue’s arrival there was no narrative about a ‘boys’ club’ and in my whole time in there, I never recognised it. There have been damaging implications from that divisiveness; two and a half years on, the new prime minister is being asked about it, costing him time and energy, and the Labour government’s reputation.”

There had been speculation that Burnham could bring Gray, now a Labour peer, back into government in an advisory role. Asked whether she could be enticed back into another high-profile job, Gray said she was enjoying herself outside government and was still “taking part in many aspects of public life”.

Looking back on what she thought had gone wrong with Starmer’s government, 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.”