the times | Wednesday January 26 2022 9times2arts
about her: frustration that she is
unapologetic about her judgments,
bristling at her defence of civil
service authority over temporary
political masters.
What rings true when I see others
complain is the suggestion that
Gray sometimes applies a rule or
interpretation for one group and a
different standard for others.
She wouldn’t allow the government
to pay for more than one free drink
per person at the farewell party of
Andrew Turnbull as cabinet secretary,
for example. And yet, there she was at
the 2005 party to mark the Queen’s
birthday, leading me and other guests
through the “link door” between 70
Whitehall and 10 Downing Street for
an impromptu tour of government
HQ. Was that a fun little adventure?
(Yes.) Or an inappropriate use of her
security pass? (Also, yes.)
The former Cabinet Office minister
Oliver Letwin was right when he
wrote that “unless she agrees, things
just don’t happen. Cabinet reshuffles,
departmental reorganisations, the
whole lot — it’s all down to Sue Gray.”
During 2004 and 2005, as Tony
Blair’s government tired in the
aftermath of the Iraq invasion
and became more politically
vulnerable, Gray consolidated her
power by establishing the unwritten
precedents and parameters of
modern government ethics, like a
miniature version of Britain’s
unwritten constitution.
First, the Freedom of Information
Act came into force in January 2005,
in an effort to provide more
transparency over the way government
operates. Yet Gray established a
“clearing house” to oversee FoI
requests from the public and
journalists centrally.
Requests often touched on the
Cabinet Office, because of the way
information flows up to Britain’s
cabinet. The clearing house gave Gray
input and ultimate control over the
way many requests were handled.
Second, Gray took new
opportunities to put political special
advisers in their place, by asserting
civil service authority. The “Spads” —
with the ear of their minister andI
liked Sue Gray, and I liked
working with her. I think she
liked me back. None of that
saved me. The rationale Gray
used to remove me from my
British civil service job in 2006
should bring a chill to anyone in
Boris Johnson’s team wondering
what their fate will be as the inquiry
she’s running reports back.
Gray, a senior official with a
fearsome reputation, has had
Westminster on tenterhooks while
investigating claims that lockdown-
busting parties took place in Downing
Street as the rest of the country was
avoiding mixing. Johnson’s enemies
are already circling, and Gray’s report
could make things much worse.
When I joined the Cabinet Office in
May 2004, working at its 70 Whitehall
HQ and breezing past the internal
door to 10 Downing Street on the
way to the canteen seemed a dream
come true.
But it was also a tough environment
for a 24-year-old upstart from the
colonies, and Gray — though it was
always “Sue” — saw that immediately.
As head of the “private offices
group” that managed the teams in
ministers’ offices, and as the arbiter of
proprietary and ethical standards,
Gray was a regular in the press office
where I worked: exchanging banter
and gossip, and on the prowl for new
recruits — or any signs of trouble.
Gray had a talent for grooming
ambitious but obedient young
members of staff. She’d be your ally
for promotions, and in return you’d
share information and do things her
way. Two parts school principal, one
part the bartender she famously had
been in Northern Ireland, Gray was, it
seemed, everywhere.
For those of us who took turns
serving as “duty press officer”, taking
point on nights and weekends, Gray
was often the person you’d call for
advice on unpleasant stories.
Ministerial misdeeds, leaks or
controversial appointments to the
House of Lords all came across our
desk when the newspaper front pages
landed late at night.
There’s sometimes a hint of sexism
in how Gray’s many victims complainBut this art purchase was also an
effort at inclusion and diversity:
tossing it out wasn’t an option. So the
art remained as a daily reminder of
what happens when you give a
25-year-old too much of a free hand.
Then came a reception for a new
Muslim civil servants’ society. In the
wake of the 7/7 bombings in London
that year, I’d pushed O’Donnell to
conduct this outreach. He even agreed
to become the group’s patron. A win!
It was unnerving to be told to vet
the guest list to ensure no extremists
were invited, but it was outright
horrifying to learn that one of the
guests brought uninvited associates
and sneaked them past security at
the Cabinet Office.
The Daily Mail found out and
splashed the story across two pages.
Next up, The Mail on Sunday found
out about a book I was about to
launch. “Cabinet Secretary Gus
O’Donnell’s speech writer Ryan Heath
has penned a book on ‘generational
conflict’ entitled: Please Just F*** Off,
It’s Our Turn Now. Gus’s friend and
ally Gordon Brown might be tempted
to send a copy to his Downing Street
neighbour,” the column said.
I was touring bookshops in Hay-on-
Wye, blissfully out of mobile range,
when the column appeared. The
downside: I wasn’t there to defend
myself as Gray and other senior
officials wondered how I could
become part of two Mail dramas in
consecutive months.
Gray took pride in running a red
line through the passages of books by
ministers and officials. Surprise books
by twentysomething staffers were not
her cup of tea.
The final straw was me sending an
email to colleagues — from my
Cabinet Office account — inviting
them to my book launch. It’s this that
should worry Martin Reynolds, Boris
Johnson’s principal private secretary.
He reportedly emailed Downing
Street staff inviting them to a drinks
party during lockdown — one of the
most potentially damaging incidents in
the whole saga.
Gray decided I’d misused
government resources in sending that
email. I could have sent it from my
Gmail account, but instead I saved
time by using the auto-prompt to call
up colleague addresses in my work
Outlook account. To do it, I used a
government computer, placed on
a government desk, as I sat on a
government chair, illuminated
by government lights.
This victimless crime is committed
thousands of times by civil servants
each day, emailing spouses and
parents and friends. But for Gray it
was reason enough to kick me out of
a job. And just like that, I was gone.
I was bundled out of the building
with an instruction to remove a photo
of a Whitehall street sign (often used
as a signifier for the civil service) from
my personal website — yes, someone
had looked through every page of my
site to rub that salt in my wound.
Gray never delivered the bad news
in person, of course. That was left to
the Cabinet Office’s head of
communications.
When I did see Gray for the first
time in more than a decade — in the
Tate Britain lobby, leaving a 2018
Christmas drinks hosted by the
lobbying firm Finsbury — she beamed
when she saw me. “It’s so good to see
you doing so well!” she said.
I can picture her saying the same to
Boris Johnson in 2035.The day Sue
Gray fired
me (because
of my party)
Britain’s most famous civil servant
does things her way. Cross her at your
peril, says POLITICO’s Rya n H e a t h
accustomed to obeying party
headquarters — chafed under Gray’s
edicts. At least two generations of
people who would go on to become
MPs, ministers or senior figures at
No 10 have now been shaped by them.
Finally, and most importantly, the
arrival of Gus O’Donnell (nicknamed
“GOD”) as cabinet secretary, the top
civil servant, in September 2005
offered Gray a chance to stamp her
views on the whole civil service.
O’Donnell didn’t want the hassle of
adjudicating on ministerial
indiscretions himself, and he needed a
problem solver at what had become an
unwieldy Cabinet Office, comprising
more than 2,000 civil servants. In
Gray, he gained a bad cop, while she
gained a fast-track to permanent
secretary status.
By then I was O’Donnell’s
speechwriter and, for a few months,
his lower-level handyman. There were
serious speeches to give, but the other
work at times resembled a script for
the BBC sitcom Yes Minister.
We were rolling out GOD’s vision
for the civil service and traipsing
across the country to far-flung
agencies for staff “meet and greets”.
We rewrote the civil service code and
made the stuffy Cabinet Office look
like the modern environment
O’Donnell wanted it to be.
Gray and I saw each other
regularly: exchanging views,
attending the same meetings.
But my unusual odd-job role gave
me a lot of face-time with
O’Donnell, and this put me in
competition with Gray. In
hindsight, I was accumulating
demerit points for months.
The first incident was comical:
O’Donnell wanted modern art for the
office — on a budget. I found a
collection of artworks by artists with
disabilities, and O’Donnell personally
chose a piece and paid for it. To
everyone’s surprise, a massive canvas
arrived: too large for one person to
handle. At that scale it ridiculously
towered over O’Donnell’s antique
conference table and everything else
in the room.
It was unavoidably mediocre, and it
was my fault.This article was first
published by POLITICO.
Ryan Heath is Senior
Editor at POLITICO and
author of the Global
Insider newsletterTop: Ryan Heath.
Below: Sue GraylikdS GB
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GETTY IMAGES; JUSTIN NG/AVALON