Following her removal
from the post of Chief of Staff, Sue Gray has been appointed to a new role as
some sort of envoy to the nations and regions of the UK. The precise nature of
the job is far from clear. After all, the three devolved nations already have
cabinet ministers allegedly responsible for promoting their nations’ interests at
UK government level. They’re not very good at it, of course, and it’s obvious
that they see their function as being more about telling the devolved
administrations what to do than about passing views back to the centre. In
theory, an envoy’s role is a two-way process, but the main emphasis has always
been on representing the interests of their paymasters. In any event, given
some of the reports about Gray suggesting that her expertise lies more in
withholding what she considers to be unnecessary detail from the PM, it's
unlikely that she is the right person to be feeding back the unfiltered views
of the natives. At one point, liaison with devolved bodies was the
responsibility of a senior cabinet minister, a certain Michael Gove, so it’s also reasonable
to wonder whether appointing a non-politician to the role is a step forward or
backwards.
But people are asking
the wrong questions. The greater the extent to which a person is appointed to a
non-job in the UK structure, the more elaborate the accoutrements that
generally go with it. Historically, an envoy is one step down from an ambassador,
so here’s the first, and most important, question: does she get a bicorn hat? And
if she does, will it have a plume of feathers, or are they reserved for full
ambassadors? Will she have an official residence in each of the territories
assigned to her care, a place where she can host grand parties to make the
great and the good of those territories feel as important as herself? Pyramids
of a certain type of chocolate delicacy are optional.
And then there’s
what is perhaps the biggest question of all: how long will she stick it out
before quietly segueing into becoming Baroness Gray of Greyness, with a seat in
the House of Lords?
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