PM turns to old Labour hands after election losses but some MPs left baffled
Sir Keir Starmer has appointed former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a special envoy on global finance, as he attempts to shore up his position after his party suffered heavy election losses.
Downing Street said the prime minister had also hired former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman as an adviser on tackling violence against women and girls.
Labour ministers, MPs and officials have expressed bafflement at the appearance of two veteran Labour figures.
While both are respected by Labour MPs, their appointments have caused confusion about how figures from Labour's past signify the change the prime minister has promised.
One normally loyal minister told the BBC: "It's a joke. There is no question to which bringing these two back is the answer."
A Labour MP said: "Not sure voters in Wigan, Wandsworth, Salford or Sunderland voted Reform because they thought we needed more advisers from a different era of Labour politics. I think this shows that Keir doesn't even understand the problem, never mind the solution."
And a former Labour adviser said: "Is his plan to combat the notion that he has no ideas to just double down on that and bring in a load of other people to come up with ideas?"
Discontent over the election results is also bursting out into the open, with up to 30 Labour MPs saying publicly that Sir Keir should resign or agree to set out the process for an orderly transition to a new leadership.
Paula Barker, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "I have enormous respect for both Gordon and Harriet, but I would have had even more respect for them if they had declined the offer of, quite frankly, non-jobs and told the prime minister that it's time for a change and he should set out his timetable."
Fellow Labour MP Clive Betts told the BBC Sir Keir should "step down" in the "not too distant future" for the "good of the country and the government".
The MP for Sheffield South East said what people told him before these elections was "we might vote Labour, we've always voted Labour, we'd like to vote Labour again but not while Keir is the leader".
Betts said that people "have made their mind up" and he did not think "rebooting and refreshing" was going to "make any difference" because the public "by and large have stopped listening to Keir".
Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, said she thought it was a matter of months before Sir Keir would step down as prime minister.
"He has said that he would always put the country first and we must recognise the dangers that we are in now," Abrahams said. "On this trajectory it does not look good."
