Boris Johnson certainly can’t expect a soft ride from the civil servant in charge of the “Partygate” inquiry
fined by the police for attending a drinks party during lockdown, Boris Johnson, Britain’s beleaguered prime minister, must now face the results of an official inquiry into. The inquiry into rule-breaking in Whitehall was commissioned by the government in mid-January, but delayed to allow the police to conduct their own investigation.
He certainly can’t expect a soft ride from Sue Gray, the 65-year-old civil servant in charge of the inquiry. She is investigating several occasions on which the rules may have been breached in Downing Street. The pressure on the prime minister increased on May 23rd, when photos emerged of him, drink in hand, toasting a departing aide in November 2020, while the rest of the country was banned from socialising.
Her effectiveness as an enforcer may be explained by her atypical career. Unlike her fast-track Oxbridge peers, Ms Gray never attended university and joined the civil service at the bottom. Others take career breaks to study climate change at Harvard or help run posh investment banks. Ms Gray joined her husband, Bill Conlon, to run a pub near Newry in Northern Ireland, an area known as “bandit country” during the Troubles.
Some question whether she should be sitting in judgment on other civil servants. They include her own immediate boss, the cabinet secretary Simon Case. He was originally due to lead the inquiry, but was forced to recuse himself when it was revealed that he may also have hosted a social event in his own office during lockdown. Ms Gray, however, may have been the better choice all along. If anyone can spot the difference between a booze-up and a “policy discussion”, it must be a former publican.
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