Labour's early missteps were pinned on Sue Gray - but now there's nowhere left to hide

Office politics can be complicated. And Westminster can get obsessed with personalities behind the scenes and where someone sits on the office floor plan. But with all that being said, it is true to say that relations between Sue Gray, Keir Starmer's former chief of staff, and some others in the early days of Keir Starmer's government were, if anything, worse than reported.

- Jessica Elgot

She is not the first outsider who found it impossible to gel with Starmer's close-knit and fiercely political team who ran his leadership campaign and worked on Labour's election strategy. His former chief of staff Sam White departed after just over a year.

There were no actual angry words between Gray and Morgan McSweeney, who has taken over from her, on a personal level, but there were two very clear power bases in the operation, which was unsustainable.