Boris Johnson blanched when he learnt who he needed to appoint as head of the official inquiry into the collection of obvious lockdown-breaking events held and attended by the Authorities throughout the pandemic.
He is aware of the ‘formidable’ Sue Grey all too nicely – and her popularity for unceremoniously ending ministerial careers.
Whereas operating the Cupboard Workplace’s ‘propriety and ethics group’ between 2012 and 2018, Grey claimed the scalps of no fewer than three senior Tories, in addition to probing a number of different embarrassing issues.
Now she is to research probably the most controversial backyard occasion in historical past: The ‘carry your individual booze’ shindig held at Downing Avenue on Might 20, 2020 – attended by the PM and his then fiancee Carrie.
Final evening one of many Prime Minister’s supporters instructed me: ‘After all Boris is nervous about Grey. She’s targeted, skilled and rigorous.’
So what’s his technique? ‘He has to hope her conclusions result in a pile-up of different our bodies that can deflect consideration from him,’ says my supply. ‘Is a civil servant actually going to finish a Prime Minister’s profession?’
Pictured: Sue Grey, Director Basic, Propriety and Ethics arrives for work in Whitehall
That’s the query haunting Boris right this moment as his premiership totters amid probably the most explosive scandal of his chequered profession.
He was compelled to nominate a mandarin so highly effective she has been dubbed ‘Deputy God’ after Simon Case, Boris’s earlier candidate, needed to recuse himself from the inquiry final month. It emerged that one of many Downing Avenue gatherings had taken place in Case’s personal workplace.
And Boris and Grey have already crossed swords – together with when he was overseas secretary.
In 2017, a pro-Brexit think-tank had held its launch on the overseas workplace freed from cost. Grey later dominated that the Initiative for Free Commerce (IFT) ought to have paid business charges to make use of this authorities area – however Boris sought to overrule her and his personal everlasting secretary.
One observer famous on the time: ‘A slash of scarlet lipstick and bouffant brown hair shouldn’t distract from the reality that she is a steely enforcer of Whitehall authority.’
Simply ask Damian Inexperienced, at one time Theresa Might’s deputy. In 2017, Inexperienced resigned having admitted he had lied concerning the presence of pornography on his Commons pc – and after being investigated by one Sue Grey.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson throughout Prime Minister’s Questions within the Home of Commons
Then there was the 2012 ‘Plegbate’ scandal, through which former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell was mentioned to have insulted law enforcement officials guarding Downing Avenue.
Grey once more led the inquiry into the affair, which lastly noticed the privately educated Mitchell resign in shame in 2012 after weeks of public fury.
A 12 months earlier, Liam Fox had stop as defence secretary whereas being investigated by Grey over claims he broke the ministerial code.
This adopted weeks of stress over his working relationship with Adam Werritty, a pal and supposed adviser. Grey had interviewed Werritty – and her report was pivotal to Fox’s defenestration. At the moment Grey, 65, is the ‘second everlasting secretary’ on the Division for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
However she has returned to an inquisitorial function she appears to relish – and now wields such energy that many consider she may even carry down the Prime Minister.
The diplomacy and energy of nerve wanted to hold out such a job had been honed removed from Westminster.
Pictured: Sue Grey who will take over from Cupboard Secretary Simon Case who has ‘recused himself’ from main an investigation into lockdown-breaking events throughout Whitehall
Whereas on a profession break throughout the Eighties from the Civil Service she had joined some years earlier than, Grey and her country-and-western-singing Northern Irish husband, Invoice Conlon, purchased a pub, the Cove Bar, within the border city of Newry, Northern Eire.
It was on the top of the Troubles in ‘Bandit Nation’: A 200 sq. mile militarised zone bristling with street blocks and watchtowers.
In 2017, one buyer remembered her as ‘ landlady’, including that ‘she would have recognized to not open her mouth’ about her work for the British authorities.
Conlon and his band, Emerald, carried out within the bar. There’s a clutch of movies on YouTube of her husband selling his songs.
Speaking of being a pub landlady, Grey mentioned: ‘I cherished it on the time [but] I’d by no means do it once more.’
Returning to the Civil Service and dealing throughout Transport, Well being and Work and Pensions departments, she joined the Cupboard Workplace within the late Nineteen Nineties. Over time she has witnessed many ministerial reshuffles.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson throughout the Prime Minister’s Questions on the Home of Commons
‘Sue will get out her whiteboard and helps match the brand new authorities collectively,’ mentioned one supply.
After new ministers had been photographed by the ready Press marching up Downing Avenue to see the Prime Minister, Grey as ethics chief was typically ready for them in an anteroom subsequent door to the PM’s examine.
One former minister mentioned: ‘She was like a rat up a drainpipe as quickly as a brand new administration was fashioned. She was your new greatest pal, instructed you ways great your appointment was, she would hug you if she knew you, after which instructed you what the foundations are.’ Grey can be answerable for the group arrange by the veteran minister Michael Gove to defend the Union.
Tory minister Oliver Letwin as soon as mentioned of her: ‘Except she agrees, issues simply don’t occur. Cupboard reshuffles, departmental reorganisations – it’s all all the way down to Sue Grey.
‘Nothing strikes in Whitehall until Sue says so. She will get to censor our memoirs too! Our poor, deluded voters suppose the Prime Minister holds the reins of energy. Incorrect!
‘The reality is our actual chief, Sue Grey, sits at a small desk within the Cupboard Workplace. If solely the Chinese language and the Russians knew! They’ve most likely been bugging all of the fallacious telephones for years.’
Whereas her true political views are in fact her secret, she had heat relations with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s famously abrasive communications chief.
In 2009, Campbell wrote in his diaries that Grey had revealed to him her sturdy views on Gordon Brown’s authorities. Revealing that she had urged Campbell to run as an MP, he wrote: ‘She felt Labour had been badly in want of route and not one of the folks on the high may give it.’
The ‘surprisingly candid’ Grey reportedly instructed Campbell that Brown’s authorities was ‘dysfunctional’.
In 2020 she was ignored to be the pinnacle of the Northern Eire Civil Service, saying: ‘I believe folks could have thought that I maybe was an excessive amount of of a challenger, or a disrupter.’
Boris – who has to log off her inquiry and who is aware of he may battle to delay publication of her hotly anticipated conclusions – will certainly be fearing the ‘challenges’ her questions will signify.