Rees-Mogg calls for investigation into Sue Gray’s appointment

Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for an investigation into Sue Gray after she was appointed as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Meanwhile, allies of former PM Boris Johnson have described Ms Gray’s investigation into lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street as a “Labour stitch-up” in the wake of her new appointment going public.

A friend of former prime minister Boris Johnson said: “Keir Starmer appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff reveals what many have suspected all along: partygate was a deliberate and manufactured plot to oust a Brexit-backing Conservative prime minister.

“The validity of the Sue Gray investigation and its findings is now completely destroyed.”

Mr Rees-Mogg said the senior civil servant’s impartiality “must now be called into question”, calling for an inquiry into her conduct.

Speaking on his GB News programme this evening, the former Leader of the House of Commons said it was a “deeply troubling” situation and that her Partygate report, and the evidence she’d handed over to police, had effectively been “invalidated”.

He said: “She should now be considered an official opposition spokesman. Miss Gray is an effective and diligent administrator. I worked with her when I was in the Cabinet Office, and I was impressed by her. But her impartiality must now be brought into question.

“The neutrality of the civil service is a fundamental part of our constitution, vital for a functioning and trusted democracy.

“It is hard not to feel that she has been rewarded and offered a plum job for effectively destroying a Prime Minister and creating a coup. This blows apart the idea of Civil Service impartiality. This appointment stinks.

“Her report brought down the First Minister of the crown, who had a majority of 80 from the electorate. This appointment invalidates her Partygate Report and shows that there was a socialist cabal of Boris haters, who were delighted to remove him.

“The former PM accepted her two reports on the strict understanding that she was impartial and that now looks wrong.

“Instead, there should be an investigation into her and into her appointment. We should have an inquiry into what she has done in her contact with Labour while she’s been a civil servant, particularly those with the office of the Leader of the Opposition.

“Her report is discredited along with the testimony that was collated by her. That’s why there must be a proper inquiry.”

Ms Gray, a senior civil servant who has spent decades at the heart of Government, currently runs the Union and Constitution Directorate at the Cabinet Office.

Her report into the partygate scandal saw her investigate 15 events on 12 dates between May 2020 and April 2021, all of which involved people gathering during Covid lockdowns.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended eight of these events, some of which appeared notably drunken and rowdy.

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