Her identify turned a sort of mantra for these hoping the UK might restore order amid the debauched chaos of Boris Johnson’s administration. “Sue Grey”, ministers and opposition leaders informed the media final winter, as anger heightened over drunken No 10 events held throughout lockdown, whereas the general public was banned from comforting dying family members. “Sue Grey is investigating Partygate. Sue Grey will uncover the reality.”
In two separate, explosive releases – an interim report in January, and a closing report in Might – the previous head of propriety and ethics, with a fearsome popularity for buying political scalps, left little doubt. Briefly, uncompromising sentences, she laid out the failings of politicians and senior civil servants: “The occasions that I investigated had been attended by leaders within the authorities. Many of those occasions shouldn’t have been allowed to occur.”
However a yr after Grey was handed the duty of creating the details round Partygate – a job that was taken off the cupboard secretary Simon Case after it emerged that his workplace had itself held a celebration throughout lockdown – buddies say she was bruised by the expertise. She was successfully investigating the prime minister, her line supervisor Case, particular advisers and the press staff at No 10.
She had little method of preventing again in opposition to hostile briefings from particular advisers as she performed her inquiry with a small staff from a dusty workplace at 70 Whitehall. Her popularity for impartiality turned a protect for others, together with Johnson. Politicians whom she criticised in her report maintained cordial relations along with her, associates say, however her relationship with others throughout Whitehall, together with Case, stays frosty.
Grey has informed buddies that no different civil servant ought to ever be requested to conduct such a high-profile and wide-ranging inquiry once more.
She is now glad to be away from the limelight and has returned to duties that she enjoys – conducting low-key visits as second everlasting secretary to the Division for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities with accountability for the union.
In November, Grey inspected a launch website for spacecraft in Shetland. “An incredible place. Feeling very dwelling right here,” she tweeted; she has been in Orkney tidal and hydrogen energy schemes and attending the primary ever Islands Discussion board; analyzing freeport proposals in north-east England; and visiting Northern Eire, as she ensures that the civil service is working for the union.
Grey, who is alleged to be the kid of Irish immigrants, has a selected fondness for Northern Eire. After becoming a member of the civil service straight from faculty, she took a profession break within the 80s to run a pub within the border city of Newry throughout the Troubles. She nonetheless visits the area along with her husband, Invoice Conlon, a rustic music singer from County Down.
Those that know her say Grey, who’s in her 60s, could possibly be lured again into one other large job in Whitehall corresponding to a everlasting secretary operating an enormous division. She nonetheless believes that she has a lot to supply – though she might have to attend for a Labour administration earlier than that occurs.
