Starmer will regret appointing Sue Gray

Keir Starmer has thrived, over the past few years, by being a bit boring. Every day, I fancy, he wakes up in the morning, and after he has finished sanding his face and arranging his hair with Araldite, solemnly addresses the mirror and promises himself: no unforced errors. He probably has a list of don’ts: don’t in a moment of absentmindedness call for a national strike; don’t demand the eradication of the state of Israel; don’t promise to tax the rich till the pips squeak; don’t appear in the same hemisphere, let alone same photograph as anyone with a grey beard. Geese routinely walk unstartled across his path. His big strategy for winning the next election so far has been just to look bland and solid and sensible and let the Tories get on with flailing around in their pit of sleaze and recrimination.  

So the appointment of Sue Gray to be his chief of staff strikes me as a very rare thing indeed from the Leader of the Opposition: which is to say, an unforced error.