Sue Gray accused of hoarding power ( The Times today on her sacking)

[Ramblingnamechanger]

So now women are not only hoarding rights but power too eh?. Can’t be having that , burn the witch.

How do you hoard power? Do you need a special cupboard? Like the way I hoard crap in the bottom of my wardrobe? I want a power-hoarding cupboard, I need me some of that hoarded power real bad.
Send power hoarding instructions please.

I assume "hoarding power" could also be described as "not great at delegating", depending on what sort of picture you're trying to paint.

Apparently the job is given to the bloke who ran their successful election bid. But really the Labour party's wins at the election where surprisingly low after the Conservative nightmare of the last 14 years.
So she has been replaced by someone who is not up to much. Oh, but he's male.

Someone on R4 talking about Gray taking the hit for the mistakes of politicians

Sounds like some people in charge are not happy with how it’s going

It does appear she’s been briefed against and forced from her role because men objected to her. The contrast with Dominic Cummings - who actually did stupid things that drew him to the public attention and made it impossible for him to continue- is stark. I cannot name a single thing she has done, other than the Boris report, which is as it should be. That said, I thought Kemi’s take on it was interesting… she suggests Sue Gray supported Scotland’s gender recognition bill. Good thing labour weren’t in power then. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13930825/kemi-badenoch-sue-gray-keir-starmer-labour-party.html

I read that she was restricting access to Starmer but I don't know how true that is, but none of this looks good for Starmer.

First he creates the appearance, if not the reality, of a conflict of interest by hiring a person who's report on the COVID parties affair was not favourable to the Tories. Then he allows his choice to be chucked under the bus in favour of the principal chucker (M Sweeney).

He looks weak because he won't stand by his own choices.

I read that she was restricting access to Starmer

I have no real opinions either way on Sue Gray but I do think it's interesting how she's described.
Wouldn't a chief of staff role always involve an element of things that could be described as "restricting access". You could frame it as prioritising the most important things (and people involved in slightly less important things get arsey and call it restricted access). I mean, obviously there is restricted access to the prime minister.

I was a bit unhappy about Sue Gray, but also pleased a woman was so close to power. It looks like the witch-hunt against her was misogynistic.

Interesting, thanks!

Haven't read the piece and only follow uk politics from the sidelines, but discussions about language always bring up Susan Glasser's justly famous "Editing While Female" piece about the simultaneous bullying out of female editors in chief at the NYT and Le Monde.

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/editing-while-female-jill-abramson-106782/

Are we now battery powered dinosaurs? Is this the secret behind the great power with which we defend our hoard of rights?

Absolutely, a key part of the job for a CoS to a Prime Minister/President is gate keeping and ensuring only the highest priority/most important/sensitive stuff gets in front of them in order to make next use of his/her time.

True however she has been accused of preventing senor members of the military, counter terrorism and other security services ministers from directly briefing the pm with top secret info which she doesn't have clearance to hear and insisting that she is briefed and will pass that info on. This if true is a massive overstep on her part and a huge breach of protocol.
The woman has had a wiff of corruption since long before the party gate scandal and it's just got worse since then. Just look at the way she tried to get tax payers money used to do up her local sports stadium (when even her local MP said it was a waste of money) or her sons new role in labour
Whilst I have no doubt that misogyny and starmers lack of a backbone have a great deal to do with her exit, her own behaviour has painted the target on her back and given her enemies the ammunition they needed to get her out. I will save my sympathy for women who don't abuse their power and positions rather than those who do

“When I worked with Sue Gray (who, by the way, I quite like), she tried to pressure me into dropping my opposition to the SNP's crazy Gender Recognition Bill.
This was the very bill that, if not blocked by Westminster, would have allowed 16-year-olds to 'self-identify' as the opposite sex – no medical diagnosis required.
Many ministers might have bowed to such pressure from a senior mandarin. But I stood firm. For me, this was a matter of principle, not politics.”

Kemi Badenoch on the front page of the Scottish Mail today

I remember reading an article in the NS weeks ago that said, in some detail, that this isn't really a Sue Gray v McSweeney thing. But now it seems perhaps it is. it all looks a bit Wolf Hall.

A senior adviser to Starmer involved in forcing Gray’s departure said that the prime minister had also come to the view that she, rather than his communications team, was the person ultimately to blame for weeks of negative headlines over donations, freebies and the influence of the Labour donor Lord Alli over the government.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/bb895c32-f161-4dd9-aef8-4b546c869262?shareToken=c74171b7f10587fd11796034cb09181b

If this is true it's a bit pathetic to blame Gray for something that stems from Starmer's own behaviour.

Oh bollocks did she.

But Gray’s allies reject this criticism and say that she has been the victim of an orchestrated campaign. “The reason they have gone for her is that she thought too many of them were not up to the job,” said one ally. “She was trying to persuade the prime minister to bring people with proper experience of government and that made her enemies. It was them or her. Ultimately she was the victim of tribes at each other’s throats.”

Sounds more like it. Starmer has been criticised by other MPs for gathering people around him with little experience and there was a power struggle with Gray and Case.

Successful election bid? They got less votes than at either of the previous two elections:

They beat the Tories though, which I guess is the main point. Perhaps they should have kept Corbyn

This - Gray and the GRR - has been in the press before:

”THE Partygate investigator who has triggered a political storm by taking a senior job with Sir Keir Starmer tried to prevent the Prime Minister from vetoing Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial new trans law, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

A leaked email shows that at the time, Sue Gray was understood to be negotiating to become Sir Keir’s chief of staff, she argued within Whitehall that she found the plan by the London Government to block Scotland’s new Gender Recognition Bill ‘difficult’. The legislation made it easier to change gender and was backed by Labour north of the border.
….

No 10 was locked in debate in December over how to prevent Ms Sturgeon from introducing the legislation to lower the age at which children could apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from 18 to 16.
On December 22, after it was agreed by Mr Sunak that he could invoke Section 35 of the Scotland Act, which allows the Scottish Secretary to exercise a veto over Scottish laws, Ms Gray sent an email to those discussing the legislation, saying: ‘I found reference to S35 difficult, but I found even more difficult the words about stopping the Bill. But as you say, this seems to have been agreed.’

One Minister involved in the discussions says: ‘It was strange. We were trying to stop a piece of legislation that was dangerous for women and children.
‘And one of the most senior civil servants in the country was attempting to block us. We couldn’t understand why.’“
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/news/politics/262467/graygate-boris-tormentor-opposed-ministers-over-trans-policy?collection=15987&&contentLayout=5pm%20Update

I think they don't trust her to start with, the Boris thing and the leap frogging into labour as an unknown in the labour party. They're being paranoid perhaps.

Then lord Alli donating £10k to her son.

They want her outside the circle

Nothing there about how the proud and noble Kemi B apparently stood firm and alone against the onslaught, though.

She's just coat-tailing on a story.

This government a shitshow? No one saw it coming I tells ya.

I think there have been some significant rumblings about her for several weeks now.

I can't really see any actual evidence it's about her sex.

I'm not surprised the LP is in panic mode, they have some serious fuck ups going on. I would not be at all surprised if there is some significant maneuvering against Starmer.