Sue Gray: Why working under Keir Starmer became ‘unbearable’

Sue Gray: Why working under Keir Starmer became ‘unbearable’

Political Currency · 2026-08-20
58:48

The third of our exclusive summer interviews sees Ed Balls sit down with the former Chief of Staff for No. 10 Sue Gray. In her first major interview since her dramatic split from Keir Starmer’s team, she details the lead up to entering Downing Street and just where things went wrong. 


Gray explains how she tried to prepare Starmer’s team for government in 2023, where things went wrong at the beginning, and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an internal briefing war. In this tense and emotional conversation, she shares her raw reflections two years on and why things were not working at the top of government.


Born in Tottenham to immigrant Irish parents, they also discuss her background, her meteoric rise through the civil service and what went on behind the scenes with her report into Partygate and the end of Boris Johnson. 


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Credits:


Production: Sam Burton & Nasreen Arain

Producer: Caillin McDaid

Video Editor: Sam Gruet

Executive Producer: Henrietta Harrison


Political Currency is a Persephonica Production and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Political Currency

Ed Balls and George Osborne take us behind closed doors into the rooms where decisions are made. Having battled it out across the despatch box, the former Chancellor and shadow chancellor now meet in the studio to discuss the decisions that affect the nation’s pockets. Our frenemies have the knowledge and experience to explain how good politics follows the economics - and expose how the powerful become powerless when faced with market forces and political currents they can’t control. Join us every Thursday.


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Political Currency is a Persephonica production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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