Has Sue Gray made Labour ready for government?

Shadow ministers were caught out by the early election, but Keir Starmer’s chief of staff will manage an orderly transfer of power, writes John Rentoul

Will Gray make No 10 as effective as it was in Blair’s later years? (PA)

Shadow ministers admit that they were “caught out completely by the election timing”, according to one of my sources. However, Morgan McSweeney, the party’s campaign manager, guessed that the announcement was coming because of the spike in betting on a July date.

What an irony that the greed and folly of Conservatives in the prime minister’s inner circle should not only have damaged their party’s campaign by prompting the Gambling Commission and the police to investigate possible law-breaking, but also alerted the opposition.

McSweeney managed to buy up in advance a lot of advertising space on Conservative news websites for this weekend and the next few days, and was surprised to have got there before the Tories did. Thus Mail Online is currently emblazoned with “Change” and Labour’s Union Jack design.