A few months back, when he was chasing your vote, Sir Keir Starmer stood at a lectern, rolled up his sleeves and promised that Labour would 'clean up politics' and 'restore standards'.
A few months back, when he was chasing your vote, Sir Keir Starmer stood at a lectern, rolled up his sleeves and promised that Labour would ‘clean up politics’ and ‘restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism’.
‘We will stamp out Tory sleaze that has polluted our politics and corrupted our democracy,’ Angela Rayner would bellow, complaining about what she called ‘cronyism in Parliament’. Rayner’s comrade Rachel Reeves, then Shadow Chancellor, was similarly anxious to ‘clean up cronyism’ in British politics firing off angry public letters to, as she put it, ‘demand transparency from this Government on how it’s appointing senior figures’.
What I can tell you, for sure, is that – after years of bleating about the evils of ‘cronyism’ – Starmer, Reeves and Rayner are already up to their necks in the scandal. As so often, in this new Government’s short history, the PM’s chief-of-staff Sue Gray has an intriguing, walk-on role. Sue Gray might be part of the reason for Labour donors landing plum roles, which started on August 7 when Chancellor Reeves welcomed a banker named Ian Corfield as a ‘Director of Investment’ at the Treasury
All very whiffy. And questions for Reeves over her generous donor’s new plum role are further complicated by the Ministerial Code, which stipulates that ‘ministers must uphold the political impartiality of the Civil Service’ and ‘ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests’.
For it recently emerged that one Oliver Newton has joined the Department as ‘Head of Business Engagement’. Before the election, he worked as a ‘Business Relations Adviser’ for the Labour party, in the office of that relentless opponent of cronyism, Rachel Reeves.Over at Angela Rayer’s Ministry of Housing, meanwhile, similar jobs have been doled out to Labour stooges. For example, a young man named Haydon Etherington was recently hired as a ‘Senior Policy Adviser’ there.
Completing a hat-trick of cronyism for the Deputy Prime Minister – who was so critical of Tory ‘cronyism’ – it yesterday emerged that Rose Grayston has been hired to work in Rayner’s department as an expert adviser on housing. Whether Deputy Prime Minister Rayner disagrees is unclear. She too has yet to comment on the escalating scandal, or to explain how hiring three Labour loyalists to supposedly neutral civil service roles dovetails with her long-claimed opposition to ‘cronyism in Parliament’ and ‘jobs for the boys’.
Mr Glen claims, however, that there has been a problem: namely that Gray, who is famed for her backstage control-freakery is refusing to sign off the appointments of these ‘Spads’. Newly hired mandarins at the centre of Glen’s complaint reportedly include Corfield, Newton and Etherington, along with a woman called Emily Middleton, who is a brand new Director General at the Department for Science and Technology.
Things are similarly cosy at the Department for Education. Here, the committed meritocrat Bridget Phillipson, who appears to be devoting her reign to dismantling private schools, has just welcomed a new ‘Senior Adviser’ by the name of Tom Crick. He too was hired in July, having previously spent three years working for Labour, in Mrs Phillipson’s own office.It is, as they say, a rum old do. And the raft of appointments is causing serious consternation inside Whitehall.
The recruitment process was highly unusual, sources in the department have claimed. ‘She just turned up one morning, two weeks ago, having been given the job without it being externally advertised,’ one said. We are, all told, in the realm of genuine political scandal. Which makes it all the more surprising that until very recently, Left-leaning media outlets were almost entirely uninterested in the whole thing.
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