DUP hopes Sue Gray move to Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff will help Labour understand Northern Ireland better

Ms Gray, the investigator of lockdown-busting parties in Boris Johnson’s government, looks set to join Labour as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

The Whitehall veteran quit the Cabinet Office to take on the party political job, prompting criticism by some Tory MPs, who said it throws civil service impartiality into question.

DUP Fermanagh & South Tyrone MLA Deborah Erskine said of the news: "The appointment of Sue Gray is a matter for the Leader of the Labour Party but given her knowledge of NI, we hope this appointment will help to improve their understanding of the situation in Northern Ireland.”

Thrust into the limelight when she took over the probe into coronavirus rule-breaking at No 10 in 2021, Ms Gray went from an influential but little-known arbiter of conduct in Government to a household name within months.

Her full report in May 2022 detailed events at which officials drank so much they were sick, sang karaoke, became involved in altercations and abused security and cleaning staff at a time when millions of people across the country were unable to see friends and family.

She criticised “failures of leadership and judgment” in No 10 and said “the senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility”.

Six weeks later, Mr Johnson was forced out of office by his own cabinet and Conservative MPs.

While Ms Gray, in her mid-60s, is said to shun the media spotlight, some politicians have gone so far as to suggest the former publican is the “real leader” of the UK.

In her former role as director-general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office from 2012 to 2018, she is said to have overseen cabinet reshuffles, served as a guiding hand in compiling honours lists, and even signed off political memoirs before their publication.

The diplomacy skills required for such a sensitive role were honed in a location far removed from Whitehall, when Ms Gray and her country and western singer husband Bill Conlon bought and ran a pub outside Newry, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles in the late 1980s.

During that time, Ms Gray once faced down IRA paramilitaries who attempted to hijack her car, bluntly refusing to exit her vehicle when they ordered her to do so, friends told the Belfast Telegraph.

She also served as the permanent secretary of the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland from 2018 to 2021. She reportedly refused to have a leaving do when she left the Belfast office, to adhere to the lockdown rules.

Arch Boris Johnson loyalists were outraged by news of her move to Labour. Jacob Rees-Mogg saying her appointment “stinks” and calling for an inquiry into her contacts with Labour.

Nadine Dorries, who served as Mr Johnson’s culture secretary, described the Gray report as a “stitch up” and said the reported move to Sir Keir’s office was “not surprising”.

And Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith said he was “genuinely shocked”, and accused Sir Keir of having “scant regard for the public image of the civil service and the damage this will do”.

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Former neighours of Sue Gray recall her time as a pub landlady outside Newry