Hiring Sue Gray is a shrewd move by Keir Starmer

Offering Sue Gray a job as his chief of staff is one of the most consequential decisions Keir Starmer is ever going to make in his political career. For a senior politician, your chief, together with your communications director, and your campaign director, are force multipliers. They represent you in meetings and briefings you can’t attend, know your mind, report your views and relay – and enforce – your decisions. Importantly, they can tell others what you think and want – thus releasing valuable time. It is an intense relationship, but one that can last for an entire administration: consider that the two senior figures who were with Tony Blair as Labour leader and prime minister from beginning to end were Gordon Brown as chancellor, and Jonathan Powell as chief of staff.

What does the appointment tell us about Starmer – and his ambitions? First, that he is deadly serious about getting into government and wants to be fully prepared for it.