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Peter Oborne’s

Diary

Regular observations of the political scene at home and abroad

Peter Oborne portrait, by Alex Chamberlain

The Fatal Choice

It is a simple matter to identify the moment when it went wrong for Keir Starmer.

Three months after Labour’s landslide victory, the Prime Minister replaced Sue Gray with Morgan McSweeney as Downing Street Chief of Staff.

Long-term readers of this Diary will recall that, by then, I had already predicted the defenestration of Gray at the hands of the McSweeney faction. When it duly happened, I stated that her departure marked “a disaster for Labour but even more so for Britain”.

Sue Gray is an old Whitehall hand who can smell a wrong’un a mile off. Her list of candidates for the post of Ambassador to Washington did not include Peter Mandelson. With Gray out of the way, McSweeney could hustle through the appointment of his mentor.

Editorial – Epstein's Victims

Peter Oborne's Diary Regular observations of the political scene at home and abroad The Fatal Choice It is a simple matter to identify the moment when it went wrong for Keir Starmer. Three months after Labour’s landslide victory, the Prime Minister replaced Sue Gray with Morgan McSweeney as Downing Street Chief of Staff. Long-term readers […]
Byline Times Team

Bad Press Awards – The Golden Bootlicker for Hack Hagiography Writing

For two weeks in July 1976, the NME carried an advert seeking “hip young gunslingers” to apply for a job at the music paper. It was desperate to find a new crop of writers that could help it move on from its hippy years and connect it to the emerging punk scene.
Mic Wright