Now Sue Gray’s son is in the firing line

It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is to blame for the government’s ails, now it is the turn of her son to face the wrath of Fleet Street. Liam Conlon, who was elected last month as the MP for Beckenham and Penge, has quickly been earmarked as one to watch. Within days of his election, he was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. Talk about a rapid rise: perhaps he knows someone at the top?

Unfortunately for Conlon, his new appointment has landed him in a spot of bother with the Mail on Sunday. For the newspaper points out today that the ministerial aide accepted a £4,000 donation from Britain’s biggest train drivers’ union – just months before his department offered it an inflation-busting pay rise. On Friday the Aslef union announced a wave of fresh strikes – less than 48 hours after it was offered a pay deal that would boost the average driver’s salary by 14 per cent to £69,000.