The Sue Gray saga casts doubt on Keir Starmer’s managerial chops

THE CASE for Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister ran something like this. He may not be a great orator and he might not have a grand vision for how to remake Britain, but he does know how to run a public-sector bureaucracy. Before the election in July he traded on his record as a one-time director of public prosecutions who focused on “getting the boring stuff right”—digitising old documents, say, or listening to the junior staff who knew where efficiencies could be made. After the showboating and internal warfare of successive Conservative governments, in a country with creaking public services, a super-administrator in Downing Street would be worth having.