WELL that's gone terribly well, hasn't it? After Keir Starmer found himself mired in controversy over his penchant for taking free stuff, and amidst plummeting poll ratings following his decision to strip the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners, he got rid of his chief of staff Sue Gray. Because of course, Starmer's rapidly increasing unpopularity can't be his own fault, can it?
Nevertheless, Starmer and his new chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, the former director of the Labour right think tank Labour Together - that same think tank which Anas Sarwar dismissed as a fringe group - decided that the problem wasn't Starmer's greed or the Labour Party which has moved to the right of the Tories under John Major in the 1990s, it was all the fault of Sue Gray, who entirely coincidentally does not much rate McSweeney.
Faced with a choice of McSweeney or Gray, amidst bitter infighting between his top staff, naturally, Starmer was going to reject the career civil servant whose respect for procedure and propriety in government is impeccable. McSweeney is Starmer's conduit to big business donations and an endless supply of free stuff. Starmer's government is very much a creature of the Labour Together think tank. Starmer would not consider alienating it, not least because he is addicted to his supply of corporate donations and free tickets to the fitbaw.
Nevertheless, Sue Gray could not be sacked outright, she knows where the political bodies are buried. So instead Starmer offered her a made-up job as his "Envoy to the Nations and Regions", a hurriedly invented post which at best reeked of metropolitan condescension and at worst came across as patrician colonialism.
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Firstly, there's the not trivial matter that Scotland and Wales are lumped together with the English city mayors. In the last words of the late Alex Salmond, Scotland is a country not a county. Secondly, there's the equally non-trivial issue of why an entirely new post is needed, why can the First Minister of Scotland not deal directly with the Prime Minister?
After all, is this not still supposed to be in theory at least a union of equals, or has the Labour Party finally abandoned that pretence like the Tories before them?
And then there's the matter of the Scotland Office, representing Scotland in Starmer's cabinet and thus having direct access to the ear of the Prime Minister is supposed to be Ian Murray's (below) job. The word supposed is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It has been clear for many years that the real role of the Scotland Secretary is not to speak up for Scotland in the British Government, but to propagandise for the British Government in Scotland. However, like the reality that the union of equals is a myth, that's a truth that Westminster will not admit to.
The news of the new envoy role did not go down well at Bute House, First Minister Swinney said he would not "be dealing through envoys" and that he "expects a direct relationship" with the UK Prime Minister.
Starmer announced Gray's new role to much fanfare, hailing the post as "vital" to his reset of relationships between his government and the devolved governments.
The first concrete task that Gray was supposed to carry out in her new role was to chair the first meeting of Starmer's Council of the Nation and Regions in Edinburgh, a toothless talking shop which Starmer insists is not a toothless talking shop with the same conviction he insists that he had no choice but to axe the universal winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
However, Gray was absent from the meeting. No explanation was given by the government from a meeting which she had been billed as chairing, possibly she was staying at home awaiting her Amazon delivery of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, and other novels about wreaking vengeance.
This week we learned that Gray will not after all be taking up her new non-job. Her allies told the Financial Times newspaper that she had rejected the job, whose role and responsibilities had never been clearly laid out. Despite the fact that Downing Street had described the new post as "vital" when it was first announced, Number 10 has let it be known that it is unlikely the role would be offered to someone else, adding that there are "no plans" for any further updates on the matter.
So, it's not that vital after all. All along it was just a wheeze to get Keir Starmer out of a political hole that he'd dug for himself. Who'd have thought it? Why, no one, except for anyone who's been paying attention.
SNP chief whip, Kirsty Blackman (below), said: "This is an utterly embarrassing saga for Sir Keir Starmer, but throughout this sorry affair one thing is clear – Sue Gray has been made to pay the price for his mistakes.
“Starmer made the disastrous decision to strip the Winter Fuel Payment from millions of pensioners and, in the face of public outcry, instead of taking responsibility he sacked Sue Gray and gave her a fake job.
“While this quite frankly humiliating story plays out, 900,000 Scottish pensioners face a bleak winter thanks to Sir Keir Starmer's government.
“It's not Sue Gray that caused Labour Government poll ratings to plummet, it’s a Labour Prime Minister hell-bent on robbing pensioners of support this winter.”
SNP MP Brendan O'Hara took Starmer to task over the winter fuel allowance during PMQs. He laid out how pensioners had referred to Starmer, who said in the past that he feared what winter would be like for pensioners when he was the leader of the opposition.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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