Among the crowd of flag-waving well-wishers shipped into Downing Street for Sir Keir Starmer‘s carefully choreographed arrival as Prime Minister, few were savouring the moment quite like Luke Sullivan.
Until this point, all his years toiling for Labour had brought nothing but bitter disappointment, from the fag-end of Gordon Brown’s premiership and the false dawn of Ed Miliband’s time as party leader to the chaos of Jeremy Corbyn.
And don’t even mention his stint as a staffer to Nick Brown, a former chief whip who had the whip removed and ended his days in Parliament as an independent MP raging at the unfairness of his suspension after an allegation was made against him relating to an event 25 years before.
But Sullivan’s experience with the whips’ office, where he had been especially nimble, had been noted by Starmer who engaged him in June 2021 as political director with a brief to soothe the anxieties of rank-and-file Labour MPs complaining their leader was aloof and uncommunicative.
‘Great appointment,’ tweeted Jonathan Reynolds, now Business Secretary and President of the Board of Trade, when it was announced.
Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, was accused recently of ‘hoarding power’ at No 10
It also looked shrewd as the 40-something Sullivan rapidly became one of the central figures in Starmer’s dozen-strong top team, working towards election victory, and was often spoken of in the same breath as acolytes such as Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s all-powerful head of political strategy.
McSweeney, however, is not the only commanding figure in Sir Keir’s inner circle. There is, of course, Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, who was accused recently of ‘hoarding power’ at No 10.
Last weekend, the Daily Mail revealed growing unease in government circles about Gray and her close links to the tribal politics of Ulster – where she once ran a pub – over her involvement in the possible redevelopment of a controversial taxpayer-funded sports stadium in the IRA heartland of West Belfast. And this newspaper last Sunday disclosed that she has been accused of blocking the access of some public servants to Sir Keir.
She ‘thinks she runs the country’, insiders said of her. As we shall see, it is a charge that is gaining considerable traction. None of this, though, was even on the horizon on the giddy morning of July 5 when Labour apparatchiks were drafted in as the backdrop to Starmer’s first appearance in Downing Street as Prime Minister.
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But just three days after those triumphant scenes marking Labour’s landslide, it was Sullivan’s misfortune to discover that he would not be taking – as he firmly expected – a seat behind the famous black door as part of the team shaping the new government.
According to sources, we understand his path into No 10 was blocked by Gray. ‘Sue has thought for a long time that Starmer’s inner circle was too male and not female enough,’ says one authoritative figure. But Sullivan was also almost certainly a victim of an unsavoury power struggle that has erupted inside Downing Street, and which is being characterised as a fight between Gray’s ‘girls gang’ and McSweeney’s ‘boys brigade’.
Bristol-born Sullivan, a likeable and popular figure, reported to both Gray and McSweeney. ‘It was an uncomfortable axis,’ says an insider. He was said by supporters to be ‘devastated’ that he was not to be part of the Starmer project.
One told us: ‘Luke had spent 14 years working for the party and was one of the few people in Labour HQ with real experience of government. He was there when Brown’s administration descended into turmoil, so he knows all about the pressure when things start going wrong.’
‘He’s still shattered,’ said the insider. ‘It really hurts. He was Starmer’s fixer with the parliamentary party and had been brought in to shore up things with what Westminster people call the ‘stakeholders’, which he did. He also thought he and Keir were close.’ When contacted, Sullivan declined to comment. ‘I have nothing to say,’ he said.
Labour’s rank and file, however, believe his absence means they have lost a key ally. No wonder the whisper along the Labour benches suggest that Ms Gray, fast becoming the most influential woman in Sir Keir’s life (after his wife Victoria), is well on her way to becoming to Starmer what Marcia Williams (later Baroness Falkender) was to Harold Wilson, and what Anji Hunter was to Tony Blair.
There is certainly something of the tough Lady Falkender in Gray’s unbending view that she is calling the shots. For example, in the way she is said to have suggested that even the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case should seek her permission to speak to the Prime Minister.
According to Commons tearoom gossip, Starmer is said to listen, just as Wilson did to Marcia, when Gray speaks. But for a government not yet two months old, the stories emerging of a turf war so soon after the election are not just alarming but dispiriting for Labour supporters who were assured Downing Street would be different from the dysfunction and colliding egos that damaged recent Tory administrations.
More concerning though is how the swirling allegations of warring advisers are already reminiscent of the conflict between Blair and Brown, which became the dominant narrative of the New Labour years. Last week, a Labour MP told the Financial Times (a paper sympathetic to the party): ‘I have been surprised at how fast it’s become a problem and how wide a range of frontbenchers are unhappy.’
No10’s head of political strategy Morgan McSweeney
Another MP said: ‘We were assured that Keir wouldn’t stand for this kind of nonsense but it’s happening within weeks of us taking power. It’s becoming a drip, drip, drip of tittle tattle and over time that is dangerous.’ One extraordinary claim is that twice in the weeks since Labour assumed office, McSweeney found his desk inside No 10 had been moved by Gray and each time put further away from the PM’s office.
A source denied this, insisting that McSweeney has been telling people that he moved office ‘at his own volition’ a few days after the election. ‘It was his decision, not hers,’ the source added.
MPs close to the leadership have been briefing of Starmer’s displeasure at the infighting – or at least the reports of the infighting.
Downing Street has tried to push back, claiming that Gray and McSweeney – who are both of Irish descent – are not in a power struggle at all. ‘They’ve worked together in opposition and have different jobs to do in No 10 now,’ said one figure. Moreover, Gray has culled a number of Labour staff who thought they were going to be working inside No 10.
Significantly, however, Sullivan’s job has been handed to a woman, Vidhya Alakeson, who was previously director of external affairs and helped develop party links with commerce. She was behind the letter published shortly before the election signed by more than 100 business leaders endorsing the party.
‘It was a clear victory for Gray and the girls over McSweeney and the boys,’ says an insider. Some say Gray is trying to shape Starmer’s premiership by restoring orderly government and ensuring the Prime Minister is not overwhelmed by meetings with aides. But friends of McSweeney say she is fast becoming toxic and a distraction.
The former senior civil servant – Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office for part of the last Conservative Government – has long been seen as a divisive figure among Tories for her role leading the Covid lockdown Partygate inquiry and whose report played a decisive part in Boris Johnson’s resignation as PM.
But it is the claims of her interference in government business that are unsettling Labour.
There is bewilderment over her ardent support behind the scenes for the £310 million redevelopment of Casement Park, a derelict stadium in the Andersonstown area of Belfast – where two British soldiers were horrifically beaten and murdered by terrorists in 1988 in what became known as the Corporals Killings – so that it can host matches in the Euro 2028 football tournament.
It is a highly sensitive and partisan project with Unionists saying they would not feel safe watching football in that part of the city, a hotbed of IRA-supporting nationalism. Such has been her enthusiasm for the scheme that Starmer’s chief of staff was accused of ‘subverting’ ministers by ‘personally’ dominating negotiations in a ‘constitutionally improper way’.
As the Daily Mail reported last weekend, Gray’s career has been cloaked in mystery since she gave up a Whitehall job 40 years ago and moved to Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles to become landlady of the Cove Bar, close to the border in an IRA-infested part of rural County Down known as ‘bandit country’.
We disclosed how a prominent Sinn Fein figure, Stormont economy minister Conor Murphy had boasted that in Gray ‘we have a friend in court’ with ‘access… directly to Downing Street’.
That period in Ulster (she later resumed her high-powered career as a mandarin) led to allegations she had worked for British intelligence, claims that in the past she has laughed off.
‘I’m definitely not a spy and no, I never have been,’ she once said. Of more immediate concern are the tensions within Starmer’s office. According to one senior source, Gray believed there were ‘too many chiefs’ in Sir Keir’s pre-government team. ‘She was always going to cut them down to size, especially if they were men.’
It is, of course, no coincidence that those she is said to object to are close allies of her rival for the Prime Minister’s ear – Morgan McSweeney. They include communications director Matthew Doyle, an old Labour hand who worked for Blair both in Downing Street and afterwards helping to set up the former PM’s multi-million pound enterprise, the Office of Tony Blair, which is now the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Doyle is close to Lord Mandelson, the high priest of political spin who adores access to influence. Another key member of Team McSweeney is Paul Ovenden, a former political reporter who runs Labour’s ‘attack and rebuttal’ unit.
During the election campaign he was said to have had a hand in 150 ‘anti-Tory’ stories that were part of the party’s vote-winning strategy. Interestingly, Gray has become close to Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, who has often felt frozen out of the big decisions by Starmer.
Gray’s key supporters are all women, deputy communications chief Steph Driver, director of strategy Deborah Mattinson – another figure from the Brown-Blair era – and Sophie Nazemi, who is the Downing Street press secretary.
So the demise of Sullivan is seen as a blow to McSweeney’s power base. ‘It is definitely round one to Gray,’ says one figure admiringly, adding: ‘She has a simple view of the political world. She believes elected politicians are more important than backroom boys.
‘Starmer is new to government and so is McSweeney. Sue Gray has spent a lifetime in the Civil Service and is really the only one who knows how things operate, which is why the boss defers to her. He needs to be told what to do and Sue is the one who can do it.
But it will not last because Morgan is a quick learner and he has political antennae like no other.’ But as another key figure told us: ‘Gray is hugely experienced in the machinery of government but she is not a politician. She might get the blame when things go wrong, especially as she’s become a target herself by being so high profile.’
This must explain why she has curiously stopped using the main entrance to Downing Street to avoid photographers. Now she prefers to enter and leave via Horse Guards where cycling staffers park their bikes. She even slips out that way to collect her lunch from a sandwich shop on nearby Trafalgar Square. No other chief of staff has not used the main gate.
Downing Street declines to comment on the furore but a source told us: ‘There are some people who take a dim view of Sue moving from the Civil Service to a political post, hence the noises off. The chief of staff makes decisions and says no to people who may not like it. That’s the nature of the job and she acts with the authority of the Prime Minister.’
One person who knows all about political power struggles is former Cabinet minister and Mail columnist Nadine Dorries. As she warned this week: ‘There is no way the PM’s office can continue to run like this,’ adding of Gray: ‘She’s Dominic Cummings Mark 2 and it will all end in tears.’
