Sir Keir Starmer will be advised on global finance by an ex-PM who has seen a crisis firsthand (Image: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)
The last time Sir Keir Starmer gave a top job to a New Labour icon, the ensuing scandal nearly ended his premiership, but he has decided he needs the counsel of two big beasts from the days when his party did not look in danger of extinction.
Making Peter Mandelson Britain’s ambassador to the United States did not end well, but Gordon Brown is back as his “special envoy on global finance”, and former deputy leader Baroness Harman will advise on how to “deliver for women and girls”.
These are important subjects. The Iran crisis could have profound and frightening consequences for the international economy, and a key test for the Government is how it responds to the recommendations of the inquiry into grooming gangs.
Former PM Mr Brown would not have taken on this role if all it amounted to was a photo-op with a crisis-stricken Sir Keir in the wake of calamitous local elections. The presence of the man who was Britain’s longest-serving modern Chancellor by his side sends out a signal to the markets that he is not entirely reliant on the advice of Rachel Reeves when it comes to the economy.
But the appointments are a reminder that Labour is still defined by the Blair-Brown years. Those on the Left are still traumatised that a Labour Government sent UK forces into Iraq, while the remaining Blairites compare Sir Keir’s often pained utterances with the easy fluency with which now-Sir Tony communicated with the country.
Read more: Wales’ anti-Labour revolution should terrify Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
Read more: Keir Starmer urged to ‘stand aside’ in wake of bruising local election losses
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1995, preparing Labour for power (Image: Alisdair Macdonald)
There are around 250 Labour backbenchers, and some may groan that the PM has given plum roles to party veterans who entered parliament in the early 1980s. When the polls give little reason to hope of a second Labour term, they may wonder if they are destined to spend their remaining days in the Commons as lobby fodder.
The Brown-Harman appointments are also a reminder of how so few of the cabinet have made a mark in the public consciousness. These men and women may have their heads down in their Whitehall offices, but how many households could name anyone in Government other than Sir Keir and the Chancellor?
Nevertheless, their presence on the PM’s team is a sign they do not regard him as a pariah or expect him to be ejected from office in the next 48 hours. They may remind the country of a pre-crash era under Labour when rising living standards were the norm.
The PM should listen to Eluned Morgan to learn what is going wrong (Image: Getty Images)
Stunt or otherwise, it’s worth a shot because time is running out for Labour. The Scottish and Welsh parliaments now provide a frightening glimpse of the future that may await Labour in Westminster unless there is radical change.
In Wales, a land that has backed Labour in every general election for more than a century, the party now has just nine of the 96 seats in the Senedd while pro-independence Plaid Cymru has 43 and Reform boasts 34. If former Welsh Labour First Minister Baroness Morgan was given a job in Number 10, she could offer much insight on how the party’s UK ministers dismayed and drove away a once-loyal electorate.
In Mr Brown’s homeland of Scotland, which also once glowed red, Labour is tied with Reform UK on 17 seats in the Edinburgh Parliament. The SNP has suffered repeated bouts of turmoil for years, but Labour could not offer Scots a more favourable vision of a Government.
Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson worked closely together in Opposition and in Government (Image: PA)
But it is the English council results that will terrify Labour MPs the most. When Reform can take control of councils in Barnsley and Sunderland while conquering Tory territory in Essex and Suffolk, Nigel Farage is entitled to describe it as a truly national party.
While Labour and the Conservatives are in a battle for survival, staff representing a powerful cocktail of experience and enthusiasm are working on a programme for a Reform Government. Amid the joviality of the campaigning and the rallies, there is an intense seriousness to Reform; this party is genuinely in it to win it.
A much younger Gordon Brown and a deeply ambitious Peter Mandelson once worked with similar determination to end years of chaos and division in Labour and present the party as a credible Government-in-waiting. Their merciless analysis of why voters had lost trust in Labour was combined with a ruthless focus on the aspirations of ordinary Britons.
No less focus is needed within Labour today to restore trust across the nation. If Sir Keir cannot save his party, then worried MPs will search in desperation for someone with confidence, charisma and conviction to take on Reform, the Tories, the Greens and the nationalists and win.