Sir Keir Starmer sparks fury as secret talks with senior civil servant revealed

A Cabinet Office report is expected to conclude Gray entered talks with the Labour Party while she was working with the department’s Propriety and Ethics Team (PET).

PET was reportedly advising MPs on the privileges committee investigating former Prime Minister Boris Johnson over whether he misled Parliament about Downing Street’s lockdown-breaching parties.

Leading Conservative MPs and supporters of ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson have been left fuming over Gray’s imminent appointment to Southside.

Wellingborough MP Peter Bone told GB News: “The whole basis of our civil service is that it is impartial, neutral and that it can serve any party in Government.

“Starmer was talking to a senior civil servant about becoming his chief of staff and I don’t know how that squares with what he’s been saying in the past.

“Imagine if it was the other way around. I’m sure Keir Starmer would have been first to criticise it. There does seem to be a bit of double standards here.”

Bone, a loyal supporter of Johnson, added: “I now fear that we may well have to move to a US system where senior civil servants are replaced by party appointees after each election.”

A former Number 10 adviser suggested the Gray debacle came as no surprise to those closely associated with the Brexit-backing former Prime Minister.

They told GB News: “I think this confirms what many people knew or could smell at the time [of the Partygate report] that this was something coordinated and to be frank a total stitch-up.

“All Starmer talked about for months on end was Partygate and Sue Gray’s report so he’s scored a huge own goal by wanting us all to forget about it.”

The ex-Downing Street insider added: “If Acoba (the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) don’t come down really hard on this then I think we will see a whole rank of Tory MPs, transcending those who backed Boris, foaming at the mouth at how this has been allowed to happen.”

A Johnson-loyalist also accused Gray of “stunning hypocrisy”, arguing: “It questions both her agenda and judgement over doing such a high level report on the Prime Minister’s fate at the same time as agreeing job terms with the Leader of the Opposition.”

The Tory source added: “Labour must have known this was wrong but didn’t care because they think they’ll win anyway … These actions have brought our whole system of governance into disrepute.”

Gray is accused of giving advice on public appointments, including potential conflicts of interests.

It has also been claimed that the former civil servant set up independent panels to interview subjects.

Paymaster General Jeremy Quin, who served as Defence Procurement Minister under Johnson, will submit a written statement to the House of Commons later today with an update on the report’s findings.

The report could torpedo Starmer’s move to confirm Gray as his chief of staff after the Labour leader stressed his own personal integrity as part of his pitch to succeed Rishi Sunak in Number 10 at the next election.

Gray and Starmer reportedly started talks in November, while the Government was still submitting evidence to the privileges committee.

Acoba is expected to advise a long “cooling off” period of a year or more before Gray can join Starmer in the Leader of the Opposition's Office.

However, the Labour Party has insisted that Gray’s appointment has been overblown by Tory MPs.

Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds, who claimed not to know the timeline of Gray’s talks with Starmer, told GB News: “I’ve got a lot of confidence that everyone has done the right thing, the right process, as part of this.”

The Shadow Business Secretary added: “I think we just wait and see what they say and I think that this attempt by the Government to make this a story a couple of days before the local elections by making a statement on it today.

“If they think this is the big issue that this country is talking about right now then they are sorely mistaken.”

A Labour source also questioned whether Gray was directly involved in assisting the privileges committee at PET.

The insider told GB News that the former civil servant was not working directly for the team at the time.

They went on to question whether Conservative MPs were outraged when the diplomat Ed Llewellyn was appointed as David Cameron’s chief of staff in 2005.