By William Schomberg
LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray resigned on Sunday following rumours about tensions within his team of advisers that cast a shadow over his government little more than three months after a landslide election victory.
Gray, a former senior civil servant, was the subject of leaks to the media about her pay last month and she was blamed by some officials, speaking anonymously to the media, for Starmer’s difficult start in Downing Street.
“In recent weeks it has become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the government’s vital work of change,” Gray said in a statement.
Starmer led the Labour Party to a sweeping victory in July, promising discipline and change after 14 years of Conservative Party rule. But his time in office has already been dogged by criticism of free gifts from wealthy donors that he and other Labour politicians received.
Starmer has repaid thousands of pounds worth of the gifts, his office said last week, but the figures have been politically damaging at a time when his government is cutting financial help for energy bills for millions of pensioners.
Gray will take up a new post as Starmer’s envoy for the regions and nations, the prime minister’s office said.
She will be replaced by Morgan McSweeney who previously was chief adviser to the prime minister, it said.
Gray was hired by Starmer in 2023 when his Labour Party was in opposition. The appointment was considered controversial because she had led a 2022 government investigation into parties in Downing Street when Boris Johnson from the Conservative Party was prime minister. Johnson quit Downing Street in 2023.
Starmer announced other changes to his team of advisers and the creation of a new strategic communications team led by James Lyons, a former senior journalist with British newspapers.
Starmer and his finance minister Rachel Reeves face a key month with the announcement of their first tax and spending plans in a budget statement on Oct. 30.
The Conservatives said Starmer’s government had been “thrown into chaos” first by the criticism of the free gifts and then by Gray’s resignation.
“Sue Gray was brought into deliver a programme for government and all we’ve seen in that time is a government of self-service,” a spokesperson for the party said.
(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Christina Fincher and Alison Williams)
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