How Starmer hopes Gordon Brown’s big clunking fist can save him from a Labour leadership coup

With a growing number of Labour MPs publicly saying he should set a timetable to quit as leader and even more saying it privately, it is clear that if Sir Keir Starmer hopes to stay in Downing Street, he has to do something to turn his fortunes around.

As he entered the weekend, the question was what he could do after the historically awful election results for Labour.

His answer: to act like an ageing rocker and revive two of his party’s greatest hits from years back to appeal to the core membership who have been tempted by the political melodies of other parties, particularly Zack Polanski’s Greens.

And so it was that the cameras duly picked up first the former deputy leader Baroness Harriet Harman and then former prime minister Gordon Brown walking up Downing Street to be given jobs by Sir Keir.

Both have been handed roles to shore up significant problems for this prime minister.

But perhaps more important is what better way to defend your premiership from rivals than to recruit the man once famously described by Sir Tony Blair as “the big clunking fist”. Gordon Brown had to see off his own phantom leadership challenges from former foreign secretary David Miliband.

Brown has been handed the role of special envoy for global finance. A man who was seen as a genuinely great chancellor, he will help start to deal with the total failure of Sir Keir’s economic policy under the current chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

Reeves was there to greet the new recruit, though you cannot help but wonder if this will see her being sidelined.

The promise of “economic growth being the number one mission” is a distant memory that has barely materialised. But Brown’s arrival also has echoes of Rishi Sunak appointing David Cameron as foreign secretary when he needed to shore up support for his failing government in 2023.

Sir Keir brings in a man who was critical of the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the US, and who commands respect and reverence in the Labour Party despite losing the 2010 general election.

The other former PM Sir Keir could have looked to was Sir Tony Blair, who won three elections, but this would have inflamed the left of the party.

Baroness Harman, meanwhile, the former mother of the House of Commons, is another figure from Labour’s recent past who commands respect. Her role as the new adviser on women and girls deals with another live problem for the prime minister.

Ever since his failure to tackle the rows over Asian grooming gangs targeting young white girls and the Mandelson appointment appeared to suggest he cared little for the victims of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Sir Keir has struggled to convince people he is serious about violence against women and girls (VAWG). This is slightly ironic given that tackling VAWG is an issue he has been personally invested in since he was director of public prosecutions.

Sir Keir’s inability to do politics well and communicate successfully has left him exposed on the issue, but bringing in big beasts from the past also reveals another weakness with this prime minister. It underlines the concerns that he and his current crop of cabinet ministers are just not up to the task. More than that, it appears to be an alternative strategy to his hopes of having a proper reset with a major reshuffle.

The speculated reshuffle may still happen after his speech on Monday, but most Labour MPs think Sir Keir is now too weakened to make a serious change and, for example, replace his chancellor or sack his ambitious health secretary, Wes Streeting.

He may need to find a way, though, to bring back former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner to prevent a challenge from her. But for now, he is hoping that the reflected glory of two of the party’s most respected grandees will be enough to prevent a move against him by his own MPs.