“The fate of Johnson and the future of British politics are in the hands of Sue Gray.”
It is a name that appears most frequently in British politicians and media recently. Although he is not a famous member of parliament or politician, he is an ordinary government official, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in charge of the so-called ‘partygate’ investigation that he attended a party during the COVID-19 lockdown.
According to the BBC on the 17th (local time), the British Cabinet Department is currently investigating 12 various parties held within the government during the COVID-19 lockdown period, including the drinking party in the palace garden attended by Prime Minister Johnson in May 2020 and the Prime Minister’s Office Christmas party in December 2020. An investigation is underway.
Sue Gray (65), a female civil servant who heads the Etiquette and Ethics Team under the British Cabinet, became a hot topic. Although he is a high-ranking official who falls under the ‘second vice minister’, he is far from a famous politician. However, the current Prime Minister is to the point of saying, “Let’s wait for Gray’s judgment” every time the opposition demands that he ‘resign as prime minister’. Gray was even given the right to meet with Prime Minister Johnson.
Gray is a high school graduate and has been working in the British government as a junior civil servant since the 1970s. In the late 1980s, she and her husband briefly left for public office to run a bar. He returned to the Office of Government Policy Coordination in the late 1990s, and since then, in recognition of his upright personality, he has served as the director of the ethics team of the Cabinet Office since 2012 to investigate corruption in major public officials.
However, the Guardian said, “The results of her investigation could lead to the resignation of the prime minister and, in the long term, to the defeat of the Conservative Party leader.” After completing the investigation, Gray must make a final report to Prime Minister Johnson, who is the ‘party to the case’.
Toslanda = Correspondent Yunjong Kim zozo@donga.com
