The departure of Sue Gray was personal, but it was also institutional. As No 10 officials told the Times this morning (8 October), her sacking will not fix “systemic” issues in No 10, across Downing Street and Whitehall. Her departure is symptomatic of a more general failure at the top of the British state, which then spreads down to the entire body politic.
More worrying than the fate of any single individual is that this dance of senior adviser dismissal and No 10 reorganisation has been repeated time after time under different prime ministers. Boris Johnson’s chaotic No 10 burned through five chiefs of staff. Twelve people have done the job, or some variation, since Theresa May entered the building in 2016. This is one symptom, among many, of a centre of government that is dysfunctional and fails to serve the prime minister.
Keir Starmer has rightly moved quickly to fill some of the personnel gaps created by Gray’s departure, with the appointment of Morgan McSweeney, along with two deputy chiefs of staff. But until the underlying dysfunctionality is fixed, problems will manifest in all kinds of ways – including iterative power struggles between officials. For all the disquiet over Gray and the briefings against her, Starmer presides over a Downing Street that is underpowered, especially on economic policy, and is nominally supported by a Cabinet Office that has become bloated beyond the point of coherence. Over the past year I have chaired an Institute for Government commission on just this question. And as well as concluding – in March, well before the Sue Gray affair – that the centre of government was broken, we recommended a programme of reform.
What should the Prime Minister change? In terms of government structures, he needs to beef up No 10 and create a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The prime minister is the executive leader of the government and should be supported as such. New units to reflect the core functions of the centre – especially one on economic and finance policy – are needed. The brokering teams currently in the Cabinet Office should be rolled into the new department so that the centre speaks with a single voice. Corporate functions such as human resources, procurement and project management should move to a new Department for the Civil Service.
Starmer also needs to use his centre of government to set out a clear programme for his ministers and their departments. It is not yet too late to translate the Labour manifesto, the “missions” and Starmer’s legislative agenda into a clear, published, direction-setting programme for the government. And such a move is desperately needed because, even more than the Budget coming at the end of the month, next year’s Spending Review is the event that will define this parliament, and perhaps this government. The Spending Review must be a collective effort, in which Starmer’s No 10 can play an equal part to Reeves’s Treasury. As work begins, it is essential that departmental and mission budgets are allocated with a clear eye to the government’s overall programme and priorities.
At a broader level, the civil service needs to change too. One appointment that Starmer has not yet made is that of cabinet secretary. Recruitment is ongoing, and once the post is filled it will be for the Prime Minister and his top civil servant to properly sort out the centre of the British state. But as applicants for cabinet secretary polish their CVs, part of their pitch must be about how to rebuild civil service capability and restore trust in the institution. The civil service needs more expertise and better skills under more confident leadership, held accountable by a new Civil Service Board.
The extent to which the Gray furore will define the government is still an open question. Few people now remember the early troubles of the Blair era: with Bernie Ecclestone and tobacco advertising for Formula One, and alleged “cash for favours”. The fuss over the Building Schools for the Future programme at the outset of the coalition government is similarly largely forgotten. But Gordon Brown’s “election that never was” and John Major’s Black Wednesday disaster set the tone for their premierships, and they never recovered.
Starmer’s first 100 days have been rocky. Prime ministers can change the narrative and master the machinery of the state – or they can be blown away. Starmer has been forced to reset his team within months of winning power, but the departure of Sue Gray alone will not fix his No 10 problems. He has made his personnel move, but must now act with equal boldness in reforming institutions if his centre is to hold.
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