Why is Sue Gray at the centre of a new political storm? | Sue Gray

For someone who is supposed to be a behind-the-scenes figure, Sue Gray has managed once again to appear at the centre of a political kerfuffle.

Keir Starmer’s chief of staff in the new Labour government, who went from backroom Whitehall fixer to being a household name as the investigator of Partygate, has been given a salary of £170,000 – about £3,000 more than the prime minister himself.

The row has exposed unrest within Labour ranks ahead of the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, which begins this weekend in a whirl of media coverage. But what is the context of the brouhaha?

What is behind the row?

Gray was given a pay rise after the election, despite other political advisers, known as “spads”, being unhappy when their salaries were reduced compared with the pay of their previous Labour party jobs.

It was the BBC that first reported Gray was paid about £3,000 more than Starmer’s salary of £166,786. That is more than any cabinet minister is paid, while many of Labour’s newly recruited special advisers have joined a union over concerns about their pay.

However, the unrest concerns more than just her pay amid a series of leaks and briefings and alongside reports of a power struggle between Gray and the prime minister’s election strategy guru, Morgan McSweeney.

How does her pay compare?

Gray’s immediate predecessor – Liam Booth-Smith, the top adviser to Rishi Sunak – was paid at the upper end of the highest pay band for special advisers, between £140,000 and £145,000 a year.

Her salary is also higher than the £140,000-to-£144,999 band Dominic Cummings received in 2020 for advising Boris Johnson. After adjusting for recent high inflation, her deal is worth marginally less, though not every UK worker could boast of an inflation-beating pay rise over the past four years.

Gray’s pay deal is almost five times the £34,963 median UK annual earnings for full-time employees, and is significantly higher than the average £33,980 earned in the civil service. With an increase on the salary of her predecessor of about 17%, her pay bracket has also rocketed at almost eight times the current inflation rate.

It is understood Starmer signed off a rebanding of the salaries for special advisers shortly after taking office in July, according to the BBC.

However, Gray’s pay is significantly lower than for some civil servants, including the £200,000-to-£204,999 bracket for Simon Case, the head of the civil service – who is facing pressure to bring forward his departure date after a series of damaging leaks and briefings.

Several other public servants earn many times more, including Mark Thurston, the chief executive of HS2 Ltd, whose salary was in a band between £640,000 and £649,000 in 2022.

Under the last Conservative government, the overall bill for special advisers in the financial year ending 31 March 2023 was £15.9m. This included £2.9m of “severance costs”, reflecting the revolving door on Downing Street at the time, with about a third linked to Liz Truss’s 49-day premiership.

Pay in the private sector is also significantly higher. The highest paid FTSE 100 chief executive, AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot, picked up £16.85m in 2023 – a sum which it would take Gray almost a century to earn.

What is Gray’s role?

Most recent prime ministers have appointed a close, trusted aide to advise them or help wrangle internal party issues on their behalf. Operating from the shadows, these consigliere-like figures often end up developing larger-than-life media reputations; sometimes infamously so, in the cases of Alastair Campbell and Cummings.

Gray is no different, as a former civil servant with a reputation as “someone who can knock heads together and get things done”, brought in by Starmer to help the party to prepare for government. Part of the very nature of her job is to act as a lightning rod for internal grumbling.

After 14 years in the political wilderness, the idea was that her knowledge of the Whitehall machine could help Labour get up to speed for the task of government in double-quick time. While the party has pushed through a blitz of early changes, some civil servants complain that work remains to be done.

As a special adviser, she is part of a team of political appointees hired to support frontline politicians. Under the previous government, there were about 117 in total, adding a political dimension to the advice and assistance available to ministers, complementing the politically neutral advice of the civil service.

The prime minister has always had the largest number of, and highest-paid, special advisers. Sunak had 41, a similar number to Boris Johnson’s 43. The number has increased drastically over recent decades, according to Institute for Government analysis, from about 38 under John Major to a maximum of 84 under Tony Blair.

The ministerial code says that cabinet ministers can appoint two spads unless the prime minister allows them to appoint more. Next door to Starmer at No 11, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has an arrangement which insiders say gives her more firepower than most, having created a “council of economic advisers” with four members within her first weeks in office.