Reply With QuoteIf this were the tories I'd be all over this so I have to do the same for Labour (even though I believe starmer is more of a tory). This looks corrupt as hell. Is this the best our country can do?
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There were 6 weeks and plenty of scandals and dishonest behaviour between the Sue Gray Report and Boris resigning.
Some Tories are trying to hide what really forced Boris out.
If this were the tories I'd be all over this so I have to do the same for Labour (even though I believe starmer is more of a tory). This looks corrupt as hell. Is this the best our country can do?
Your view on it is very closely aligned with mine.Originally Posted by jon1959
I hope we're wrong.
I'm a tad uneasy about it: it would be disastrous if Johnson managed to wriggle free because of a miscalculation.
So the lead bbc story went from hancocks texts, to sue gray getting a new job, to boris knowingly misleading Parliament and Partygate. Within a couple of hours.
And some people will deduce from this that there is corruption on the left
Wait what??
Starmer and his front bench are completely hopeless
I hope to god they have enough in the tank to get over the line and beat the tory gits
If labour can't win this they may as well retire , the lot of them
Dreadful decision, giving the Tories lots to chomp on .
How this sit with impartiality is a mystery ??
Isn't there supposed to be a year or so grace period before top civil servicants are allowed to take on external politic / media roles , she must know that ?? .
I'm sure Sue Gray applied that actual rule to someone else recently.
She must be okay though as she once thought Alistair Campbell should stand as an MP , as Labour needed something fresh and her son is a big Labour man .
From Spectator today :
Did Sue Gray break the rules?
By James Heale
Lawyers know which questions to duck – as Keir Starmer demonstrated on LBC today. Appearing on his weekly phone-in, the Labour leader refused ten times to answer questions over when he first made an approach to Sue Gray about appointing her as his chief of staff. The Spectator was the first to report – in November – that Starmer was seeking to hire a senior civil servant for the role. So was an approach made to Gray five weeks ago – or five months ago? Starmer refused to say. When news first broke that Gray was being considered for the role, party sources suggested that Starmer personally initiated contact ‘several months ago’. Now, Starmer will only say that he has been in discussions with her for ‘a little while now.’
This matters because there are strict government guidelines around civil service impartiality and accepting party political roles. Gray is expected to tell Acoba today when exactly an approach was made. But Conservative MPs are not content to wait for the watchdog’s recommendations to be made public. Sir Robert Buckland has secured an Urgent Question on the appointment, which will be debated in the House at 3.30 p.m. Some are furious about Gray’s role in the partygate probe and have publicly suggested that she was biased in her investigation. Others want to know why she did not inform ministers of any contact with Labour figures to discuss her new job – even though it is a requirement under civil service rules.
Gray’s proposed appointment doesn’t invalidate the work she carried out during partygate. However, the timing and manner of the approach are the things that concern many in Whitehall. Susan Acland-Hood, the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education, reportedly reminded her colleagues last week of the importance of flagging any contact with Opposition figures. The irony is not lost on many in SW1 about a former head of the Cabinet Office’s Proprietary and Ethics team being under suspicion of breaking the civil service code she was meant to uphold.
Hopefully everything will come out during the process. If there's any proof of wrongdoing then Starmer has shot himself in the foot.
No doubt that Life on Mars will support the due process that he expects other parties and their representatives to receive.
I just about managed to type that without laughing.
I sincerely doubt anything severely bad or immoral has been done, but the optics aren't great and Starmer struggled today to say when he first talked to her about the role etc.
Seems like it might have been wiser to leave more time between her report and appointment and/or looked for someone else.
Fundementally, her report led to Boris Johnsons resignation, so it just doesn't look that independent if she then gets a senior role in Labour.
Wouldn't be surprised if this job offer ends up being withdrawn tbh
"Fundementally, her report led to Boris Johnsons resignation"
Pardon? I think that we are re-writing history here, no?
It was his backing of Chris Pincher which led to the Tory revolt - which then led to his resignation.
They were all standing by him throughout 'Partygate' and the aftermath.
He was going absolutely nowhere until it was found out that he was lying about being aware of Pincher's previous behaviour.
If you want to argue this fact, Boris Johnson even said that the Sue Gray report "vindicated" him.
I did listen , it was weird asked ten times about a simplistic question ,not saying anything is wrong just be honest . Something like yes to be fair we have been courting Sue's services for some time as we want to be ready for Government and she knows every nook and cranny ? whats to hide ?
I know its so silly I'd laugh as well ,glad your with me on this one ..
I'm laughing *at* you. Not with you
I think if you asked people the reasoning behind Johnson's resignation then party gate would be very high up that list and she did author the report.
I doubt anything is untoward, but it is bad optics as several have noted, and it is pretty bad that Starmer couldn't give a straight answer on when he approached her.
Instead of focusing on the facts of what caused Boris Johnson's resignation you'd rather hypothesise on what "people" thought the reasoning was.
I don't think that this would stand up to scrutiny from you if another poster tried this tactic with you, James.
Partygate and Sue Gray's report did not lead to Boris Johnson's resignation and, again, in his own words, the SG report actually "vindicated" him.
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-07-06/...-boris-johnson
Partygate was part of the Johnson omni-shambles, but not the trigger. There were plenty of straws on the camel's back but Pincher was the final one - and the one that finally tipped it for a large chunk of the Cabinet and the 'Men In Grey Suits'.
How the public remember the pathetic saga is anyone's guess - with short term attention spans and corruption/lies fatigue, I expect they have the latest story in their heads. That would have been Pincher at the time - but with the desperate attempts now underway to re-write history, I'm sure a good percentage will be suckered by the Dorries and Rees-Mogg propaganda.
If Sue Gray is anything but professional, competent and ethical I will be very surprised. But as Starmer is none of those things I stick by my view that this appointment has handed a PR gift to Johnson and (probably) to Sunak.
You are missing my point. I'm not saying she or Keir have done anything wrong (although like I said, it's weird he can't give a straight answer) but I'm saying it looks bad, and if it looks bad it's about how it looks in people's minds.
How am I missing your point?
I created this thread and began it by saying how I thought that it was terrible optics for Labour (and mentioned it again a few more times during the course of the thread).
You've made a couple of points about this story as far as I can tell.
One of them was about optics (which we seem to fully agree on) and the other was that the Sue Gray report "fundamentally led to Boris Johnson's resignation" - which is pure fantasy.
Yes fair point tbh. I meant that party gate ultimately led to his resignation, so it's fair for you to point that out. I agree with you, her report as such didn't.
That's close enough.
This never happens. I don't know what we're supposed to do now.
Do we hug?
We play football for 24 hours and then start shooting eachother again tomorrow 😊
Just been listening to the News Agents podcast, they played an LBC interview Keir Starmer had with Nick Ferrari in which he was asked when he first talked to Sue Gray about the Labour Party chief of staff job. When this thread started, I said I didn’t see a problem for Labour, but, after hearing Starmer’s evasive and uncomfortable answers, it’s impossible not to wonder “what’s he hiding?”.
Rightly, John Sopel and Emily Matlis compared Starmer’s squirming with the mess Richi Sunak got himself into regarding questions about whether he had private health insurance or not - in both cases, I would have thought that the majority of “normal” people were thinking “just answer the bloody question” as they listened to these two people who, it seems, are unable to relate to them.
There was also mention of a poll in the Times where 86 per cent of respondents at the time of the broadcasting of the podcast said that they still had faith in Sue Gray’s report and only 14 per cent thought it was politically motivated, so why is Starmer so defensive about the matter? He’s only making things worse.
Starmer is a fanny
And utterly hopeless
The buck stops with him and his front bench
I want these Tories put to the sword at the next election and hopefully in the wilderness for as long as possible
But this is embarrassing seeing him doing a very good job of shooting himself in the foot
He's got no charisma , style or any sort of confidence which is incredible considering he was DPP
I hope to god he's got enough about him to beat the conservatives
I don't think I have ever seen a decent Labour or Liberal leader in my lifetime
No wonder the Tories take the piss
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