BREAKING UK NEWS – Sleaze bomb explodes – British Establishment on the Ropes – Who the hell is Sue Gray?

SPECIAL REPORT from the trenches – January 13 2022

More revelations of PartyGate have emerged this evening as the Press reveal our Queen sadly sitting alone at the time of her husband’s demise whilst the mandarins of our revered civil service party like it’s 1999. It really is serious now – the country are up in arms and the very heart of monarchy is a risk – notwithstanding Prince Andrew’s machinations over a floosy who claims honour out of victimisation – yeah really.

IN true British Establishment fashion, when the chips are down and the sleaze oozes out from the Halls of Power, the first thing to do is set up a ‘Royal Commission’.  The effect of this diversionary course is to bury the evidence over a long enough time scale so as to allow other overwhelming events to occur, so that the public forget and move on.  But not today; Boris’s future will hinge on the report that Sue Gray will produce in short order – no obfuscating delays here.

This time, however, we have a senior civil servant charged with investigating her own boss in his publically exploding indiscretions of which he was really not part, in truth.  It was his civil servant minions who were laughing at the Queen and the British public as they partied with abandon in their government offices unseen by the general public; and who in their innocence, blithely succumbed to: “Keeping Calm and Carrying On” as they were reminded of the wartime spirit which carried Great Britain through its last truly traumatic event.

SO NOW – I give you “Sue Gray”, upon whom the fate of Boris depends. BUT – Who the Hell is Sue Gray? And who is she that holds the fate of this dark and gloomy island in her hands?  Compliments of Wiki (they do have their uses) regrettably – a bland Bio:

“Gray has worked in the Civil Service since the late 1970s, apart from a career break in the late 1980s when she ran a pub in Newry with her husband Bill Conlon, a country singer from Portaferry, County Down.  She joined the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s.  She later served in the Cabinet Office as the director-general of the propriety and ethics team (2012–2018) and head of the Private Offices Group under the Cabinet Secretary.

            In her role overseeing ministerial offices and ethics in government, Gray was described as “the woman who runs the country”. She ran the .Plebgate Enquiry inside the Cabinet Office, the 2012 reform of non-departmental public bodies, and the investigation into allegations against Damian Green MP relating to his use of computers intended for work purposes.  She has been portrayed as relatively unknown but highly influential, and has been described as “an enigma” and “notorious for her determination not to leave a document trail.”

            In December 2021, it was announced that Gray would take over the investigation into the alleged Christmas and other parties and social gatherings that took place at 10 Downing Street during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, apparently against lockdown legislation and guidance at the time. The probe was initially led by Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, until he recused himself following separate allegations about Christmas parties in his own office during the same period”. Surprise, surprise – down the rabbit hole we go.

BUT – that was WikiWhat’s the real Sue Gray about?  Who is the most powerful woman in Britain? The Prime Minister? The Monarch? Or the Director General of the Propriety and Ethics Team in the Cabinet Office?

The last of these individuals, Sue Gray, operates in carefully preserved obscurity. To the wider public, her very name is unknown. Yet she was running the inquiry into the charges made against Damian Green, who was one of the Prime Minister’s of the day oldest friends in politics, the First Secretary of State and also, as it happens, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

At the end of this important task, she would advise Theresa May whether or not Green had broken the Ministerial Code. In less bureaucratic language, Gray would decide whether the allegations against him of sexual harassment, and of having had pornography on his computer when the police searched his office in 2008 – both of which charges he had strenuously denied – amount to anything, and whether in her view he must resign.

The likelihood is that after many years’ experience of this kind of crisis, for she has been in the Cabinet Office since the late 1990s, she already has a shrewd idea what the outcome of her inquiry will be. As another Whitehall insider who has watched her in action says, “She’ll know at once whether something’s a resigning matter.”

And yet it is possible to work at the Prime Minister’s side, and still not realise for a considerable period quite how powerful Gray is. David Laws relates, in ‘Coalition’, his memoir of the 2010-15 government, a conversation over breakfast in the Number Ten canteen with Oliver Letwin, David Cameron’s policy chief, who declares that real power does not lie with the Prime Minister, or even with the Cabinet Secretary, and goes on:

“It took me precisely two years before I realised finally who it is that runs Britain. Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray, the Head of Ethics or something in the Cabinet Office.

“Unless she agrees, things just don’t happen. Cabinet reshuffles, departmental reorganisations, the whole lot – it’s all down to Sue Gray. Nothing moves in Whitehall unless Sue says so. She gets to censor our memoirs too! Our poor, deluded voters think the Prime Minister holds the reins of power. Wrong! The truth is our real leader, Sue Gray, sits at a small desk in the Cabinet Office. If only the Chinese and the Russians knew! They have probably been bugging all the wrong phones for years.”  Yes they have in the form of an obscure journalist: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/christine-lee-mps-spy-threat-uk-b1992367.html

In her official biography, Gray gives very little away, whether to the Chinese and the Russians, or to us, her fellow citizens:  “Sue joined the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s. Before joining the Cabinet Office, Sue worked in Transport, Health and DWP covering a range of roles which included both policy and front line delivery. “She also took a career break to run a pub in Newry, Northern Ireland.” – very odd – under cover perhaps?

That last statement brings one up short, but I can provide no further details. It is only fair on these occasions to leave scope for younger and fitter colleagues to uncover new material.  For present purposes, suffice to say that Gray is indeed a key figure, whose power has extended over the last four prime ministerships and is at its greatest when things go wrong. As Gordon Brown says in his memoir (which Gray or her team will have read):

“Like Tony before me and two prime ministers since, I was able to draw on the support of Sue Gray, a senior official in the Cabinet Office, who was always there with wise advice when – as all too regularly happened – mini-crises and crises befell.” That is all Brown says about her, for he conforms to the usual practice of mentioning her only in passing. The one extended piece about her which I have come across is by the investigative journalist Chris Cook, who is tremendously cross with her for her key role in blocking Freedom of Information requests.

As far as I can see, apart from Cook’s ground-breaking effort, no one has so much as attempted to write a profile of her. Yet so long as they can be assured of anonymity, people who have watched her in action enjoy talking about her, for they recognise her as a remarkable figure. In the words of one observer: “She heads Whitehall’s equivalent of the Office of the Holy Inquisition. If the Cabinet Secretary is the Pope she leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. She defines what is heretical.

“A slash of scarlet lipstick and bouffant brown hair should not distract one from the truth that she is a steely enforcer of Whitehall authority. All power to the Civil Service is her modus operandi. She owes her allegiance to the permanent government and the deep state.”  It is only fair, as balance to that, to quote a tribute to her by a mandarin:

“She does a completely thankless task. I’m a great fan of hers. If politicians are incompetent at reaching a verdict about politicians’ ethical standards, someone has to do the dirty work.  “She’s always wanted to escape from that job, but for some reason she never can. Anything difficult or complicated, so it might be unpopular, a minister will pass to her to deal with. People blame the messenger.”

Gray is deeply involved in Civil Service appointments, and in the honours system. Another of her duties is to oversee the private offices of ministers and permanent secretaries throughout Whitehall.  Her critics say this gives her enormous patronage, and an enormous ability to reward loyalty. One of them remarked that she is “very clear in a crisis, very cool, very collected”. But the same figure added that in his opinion, “she quite literally makes it up as she goes along”.  Perhaps the fracus about Tony Blair’s knighthood has eacaped her seering insight?  More on this later.

For, although she is the guardian of the various codes of conduct for ministers, officials and special advisers, she is not inclined to commit her verdicts to paper, or indeed email, or to relate them to first principles. Word of mouth is preferred, and the deciding factor is whether something “feels right”. It is the way of our subtle Britishishness.  I had always been advised by a mentor that the best way to challenge someone is to say, politely: “May I have that in writing?” You would be surprised how many back down.

If you are thinking of recommending one of your friends for a life peerage, and want to know if this character is likely to survive scrutiny, the best thing is to ring Gray and run the name past her.  But how in the end do any of us decide whether a minister ought to resign? On almost all such occasions, a swirling mass of considerations, some serious, some frivolous, compete for attention.

As the late Alan Watkins wrote in ‘A Conservative Coup’, his account of the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, while recounting the forced resignation from the Cabinet of Nicholas Ridley in July 1990 (after Ridley had given an interview to the Spectator in which by implication – and certainly in the accompanying cartoon by Nicholas Garland – he likened Helmut Kohl to Adolf Hitler), on such occasions, “The game of Hunt-the-Issue is played enthusiastically.”

When Ridley went, Thatcher was left, Watkins remarks, “without a single committed supporter inside the Cabinet”. And within a few months, she too was gone.  So Gray’s decision about Green – an even more important prop to May than Ridley was to Thatcher – is of the utmost significance. Getting an official to advise in secret, with a complete lack of transparency, is not ideal, but at least it provides some time, and is preferable to bringing in a senior police officer, or some retired business person, both of whom would be affronted and indeed confused, by the way politics in Britain works.

Gray knows the system inside out. If one considers how many ministers have come and gone while she has remained in post, one could say she provides a cradle to grave service.  As yet another Whitehall insider puts it, “When there’s a Cabinet reshuffle, Sue gets out her whiteboard and brings it downstairs.” She helps fit the new government jigsaw together.

As a new minister, you are photographed walking up Downing Street, ushered in to see the Prime Minister, told (say) that you are the new Home Secretary, and then, immediately after this exhilarating interview, find yourself meeting Gray in a little ante-room next door.  In the words of the informant quoted a couple of paragraphs ago, “She’s right in there like a rat up a drainpipe as soon as a new administration is formed.”

She is your new best friend. She tells you how wonderful your appointment is, if she already knows you she gives you a hug, and she tells you what the rules are. “There is a creation of indebtedness from the start,” as my source put it. “She inveigles her way in by being terribly helpful on stuff.” Gray will help you to make a success of your great new position. She knows every Permanent Secretary, and you get her to sort things out.

She becomes your friend because she is the person you rely on. Everything goes swimmingly until the moment when there is a divergence of views, and you realise her loyalty is to the system – to Minister X and his predecessor, rather than to you.

One of her most remarkable demonstrations of her ability to get on with the new people running Downing Street was her rapprochement with May’s two advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. When they were at the Home Office, Gray was an enemy in their battle with Number Ten. She was particularly unsatisfactory during the dreadful row at the end of 2014, when Timothy and his colleague Stephen Parkinson refused to campaign on behalf of the Conservatives in the Rochester by-election.

They said this would be a breach of the rules for special advisers, which prohibited political campaigning, but Gray refused to back them up on this. Cameron meanwhile wanted all special advisers to do as he told them. The whole row was very bitter, and Timothy and Parkinson were barred from standing as Conservative candidates in the 2015 general election.

Yet in 2016, when May became Prime Minister and summoned Timothy, Hill and Parkinson to her side to help her run things, there was Gray waiting to greet them. Suddenly she was regarded once more as a fantastic asset. For whenever British politicians falter, British civil servants, especially Gray, help fill the vacuum and keep the show on the road.

SO – there you have it and I am excited to be waiting in the wings as this farce plays out like a Shakespearian tragedy because of course it is all theatre in the end and while the elites play and sojourn on their yachts – the plebs go on following the rules like the sheeple they are and the power people continue to pull their strings.  The next couple of days will be an education of how Britain really works and I hope to bring you the end result however dystopian it may be.

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Author: Austrian Peter

Peter J. Underwood is a retired international accountant and qualified humanistic counsellor living in Bruton, UK, with his wife, Yvonne. He pursued a career as an entrepreneur and business consultant, having founded several successful businesses in the UK and South Africa His latest Substack blog describes the African concept of Ubuntu - a system of localised community support using a gift economy model.

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Iska Waran
Iska Waran

So she’s like the Oprah of England.

flash
flash

The USA should have nuked England instead of Japan . All the rot of Christendom began there.

gatsby1219
gatsby1219

The Crown…

Glock-N-Load
Glock-N-Load

comment image

AK John

Sounds like she is the Rothchilds spokesman.

Ghost
Ghost

She is sort of like Ollie North but way better at it.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
What a load of typical patriarchal bilge – blame a woman.
The rampant sexism and bigotry which oozes from this hit piece is absolutely atrocious. It should have come with a trigger warning.
I’m sooooooooo offended right now – I’m literally sshaking.
Obviously Feminism still has a lot of work to do.
F*ck the Patriarchy!!!! Women can do ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!

Brought to you by Pfizer.

Guest
Guest

I thought the US was weird still acting like we have a government. When you think about it it’s just like the royalty of wherever and the Vatican since time began, as in ‘that’s just how they are’. (I mean they have been a lot worse so it’s a feature not a bug).
Of course. The Oprah comment sums it up.

BL
BL

AP- Sue Gray reports to Boris in her position as an ethics oversight officer in your government. Here we call someone like that “Frank Da Fixer,” not that there exists any hint of ethics in government. Its political theater brought to you by the usual suspects.

Ghost
Ghost

Am getting ready to read this again and comment toward your point, but meanwhile, this guy is great.

Oldtoad of Green Acres
Oldtoad of Green Acres

Well done Austrian Peter.
A glimpse behind the curtain.
A quote from Alice in Wonderland would be appropriate, there we go, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

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