Sue Gray’s clipping Angela Rayner’s wings when she’s not wanting
While Angela Rayner was raving on the party island of Ibiza last week, back in London her powerbase was being stealthily dismantled by Sue Gray.
Ms Rayner glories in the title of Deputy Prime Minister – but insiders suggest that the day-to-day reality is very different.
‘That scissoring sound you can hear is Sue clipping Angela’s wings while she isn’t looking,’ says one.
The most visible sign of this is the fact that two months after winning power, there is still no sign of Ms Rayner being granted the use of Dorneywood, the grace-and-favour 18th-century house in Buckinghamshire used by John Prescott and other deputy prime ministers in the past.
Ms Rayner likes to style herself as ‘Prescott in a skirt’, in emulation of her plain-speaking predecessor as Labour No 2. But when Lord Prescott was grappling with his mistress Tracey Temple in his palatial office in Admiralty House, he occupied a formal Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with its own dedicated staff.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was raving on the party island of Ibiza last week
The Mail on Sunday understands that the Civil Service’s preparations for a Starmer government included a plan for Ms Rayner, who is also the Housing Secretary, to control a similar operation: the allocation of two private secretaries who had been security cleared to operate at the highest level of government.
That would reflect the complexity and sensitivity of the material which the ODPM would be expected to handle.
But sources say that Ms Gray, 66, has sent them to work instead for Starmer’s enforcer Pat McFadden, the increasingly powerful Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
While Ms Rayner has the use of a room in the Cabinet Office next to McFadden, her main base is the Housing Department, a 20-minute walk away, where her officials are cleared only to operate at a level consistent with planning reforms and workers’ rights.
In addition, a source says: ‘It seems a purposeful act to strip away Angela’s power and influence. She is a DPM without an ODPM. Pat is effectively going to do that job.’
Ms Rayner angrily denied that she occupies her title in name only after Chancellor Rachel Reeves persuaded the Prime Minister that Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds should take a prominent role in Ms Rayner’s ‘red revolution’ on new employment laws, which has horrified firms by promising French-style rights such as working from home, to avoid alienating the City.
Sue Gray has been accused of cronyism in recent weeks, as she found herself at the centre of a row over political appointments to the Civil Service
Ms Rayner insists that far from being ‘frozen out’ she has been attending powerful ‘quad’ meetings of Starmer’s top team and doing ‘unsexy’ work on big policy areas.
Ms Gray has been engulfed by claims of power-hunger and cronyism since the MoS revealed earlier this summer that senior Whitehall sources had claimed that the Prime Minister was being denied vital security briefings because Ms Gray was restricting his intelligence briefings, with even Cabinet Secretary Simon Case forced to ask her permission to speak to the Prime Minister.
Since then, Ms Gray has also been at the centre of rows over political appointments to the Civil Service and of over-centralisation by blocking the appointments of MPs’ special advisers.
There has been controversy too over her plans to replace Elizabeth Perelman, the PM’s principal private secretary, with one of her former close colleagues, Daniel Gieve.
It has prompted Baroness Stuart, the head of the Civil Service Commission, to write to all departments ordering them to declare any exceptional hires made in the weeks after the election so that they can be reviewed by the watchdog.
And there seems to be little sign of any end to her power struggle with Morgan McSweeney, No 10’s head of political strategy, who heads the third leg of No 10’s tripartite power structure, the political strategy unit – the other two being the Prime Minister’s Office and Ms Gray’s office.
Sources claim that Ms Gray engineers the No 10 diary to ensure that the most important face-to-face meetings are held on Fridays, when Mr McSweeney is often away at his Scottish country house in Lanarkshire. Downing Street has already been forced to deny claims that McSweeney twice found his No 10 desk moved by Ms Gray – each time further away from the Prime Minister’s office. She is also said to be ‘machinating’ against Matthew Doyle, the Blair-era Director of Communications.
The sources said that Ms Gray had angrily dismissed reports that it was ‘Sue versus everyone’ in the Government, and was blaming Mr Case and Mr McSweeney for being behind the briefings against her.
They also talk of a ‘sclerosis’ in the operation, with senior Rishi Sunak advisers such as security adviser Sir Tim Barrow and Foreign Policy adviser John Bew ‘still sitting there, doing nothing and not being looped into anything, while their successors can’t start because they haven’t been vetted’.
The source said: ‘This should all have been sorted out ages ago. The decision making remains very slow on appointments such as new ambassadors and is being savage on their salaries. She is not changing her ways.’
A Downing Street spokesman denied that Ms Gray had moved officials from Ms Rayner’s team to Mr McFadden’s operation.
No 10 has also denied the claims of feuding, power-hunger and cronyism.
