How will Keir Starmer’s new Downing Street work?

Sue Gray has stepped down as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, forcing an early overhaul of his operations in Downing Street.

This is not the first time a prime minister has changed the way the center of government operates.

But reforms introduced three months after taking office may determine how Sir Keir now plans to wield power.

Ms Gray’s replacement as chief of staff will be Morgan McSweeney, a key Starmer aide credited with orchestrating Labour’s July election victory.

Unlike Ms Gray, a long-time civil servant who joined Sir Keir’s senior team last year, he has been involved in Labor politics since the Blair days.

He had been head of political strategy for Party 10 and his appointment was seen as an attempt to give the operation a sharper political edge after the party struggled to regain power for the first time in 14 years.

While he already has considerable influence over policy, his new role will give him greater responsibility to drive the government machinery to ensure those policies actually materialize.

Mr McSweeney, appointed directly by Sir Keir, will become Downing Street’s most senior special adviser (or “spad”), responsible for the political arm of the prime minister’s team.

Unlike Ms Gray, he will appoint two deputy chiefs of staff: Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, both promoted from No 10 .

Former journalist James Lyons has been appointed to lead a new “strategic communications” team, reporting to Sir Keir’s long-serving communications director Matthew Doyle.

He is expected to play a key role in designing the “grid” of the government’s announcement program – an area that unusually falls to Ms Gray.

But changes are also taking place in the organization’s civil service, whose incumbents are not political appointees but must work closely with them.

It has been announced that Nin Pandit, who has been director of policy at No 10 since the end of 2022, will become Sir Keir’s principal private secretary (PPS).

In her role as one of the so-called “golden triangle” of senior civil servants alongside the Cabinet Secretary and the Monarch’s Private Secretary, she will provide a key link with other departments as well as the Royal Family.

The key role, the most senior in Sir Keir’s private office, has been vacant since the departure of predecessor Elizabeth Perelman, with reports of tension over who should succeed her.

Theresa May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, said he and May’s PPS were jointly responsible for “running the building” and ensuring No. 10 was on track.

Although Blair-era reforms that allowed spades to command the civil service were reversed under Gordon Brown, the chief of staff’s close relationship with the prime minister means the holder of the post still wields enormous power.

But the structure has been accused of lacking accountability.

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s senior adviser who never held the title of chief of staff, has called it a “terrible job title” imported from the US that doesn’t Reflecting the reality of the workings of power in Westminster.

in his Evidence from Covid investigationhe said he was not responsible for No. 10 officials and lacked the ability to hire and fire them.

The relationship between Mr McSweeney and Ms Pandit is now crucial to Starmer’s No.10 and fills a key void at the senior level.

But the full impact of this week’s changes may take some time to be felt.

This is partly because Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, is a key figure in No 10. About to step down After four years of work.

Mr Case will be replaced at the end of this year and the recruitment process for the £200,000 role is underway.

The operations of Downing Street have evolved since the Thatcher era, with the number of politically appointed posts increasing significantly under Tony Blair.

It’s also a more decentralized organization, with newer teams, such as the one created under Johnson dedicated to data science, sitting alongside longer-standing teams such as the policy unit and press office.

Ironically, Ms Gray herself made this point in a major 2022 report into the “partygate” scandal, which led to the lockdown of COVID-19 parties in government buildings.

she Wrote Leadership structures are “fragmented and complex, which sometimes results in blurred lines of responsibility”.

She added: “Too many responsibilities and expectations are placed on senior officials whose primary function is direct support to the Prime Minister.”

How her successor shapes these structures is now crucial as the new Labor government tries to find its footing.