The great machinery of government is fundamentally broken

Sue Gray was sacked from Downing Street after just 94 days as Keir Starmer's chief of staff.

The Sun on Sunday revealed that this was down to yet another row over pay.

Gray's salary of 170,000 was higher than that of the Prime Minister's 166,786 .

Gray was partly responsible for spad salary decisions.

Britain is an outlier in how it treats politically appointed advisers.

Recommendations include recasting spads as valuable assets’ rather than a form of necessary evil’ and increasing their pay by a blanket 10 per cent .

This won’t be popular at a time of cost-cutting, especially given how fast spad numbers have grown over the Tory years.