Starmer brings back Brown and Harman as pressure mounts after heavy local election losses
Keir Starmer has brought former prime minister Gordon Brown and former party leader Harriet Harman back into government, moving to steady his premiership after a disastrous set of local election results. Downing Street said on Saturday that Mr Brown will serve as a special envoy on global finance and Baroness Harman will advise on women and girls.
The appointments come as pressure builds on the prime minister, with some Labour MPs urging him to resign after the party lost hundreds of councillors in England and suffered a major setback in Wales. Labour haemorrhaged support in former strongholds while Reform UK made large gains, and Plaid Cymru became the largest party in the Senedd election.
Critics include Louise Haigh, his former transport secretary. Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, one of Labour’s biggest financial backers, warned the party faced “oblivion” unless he stepped down. Sharon Graham, the boss of Unite the Union, said he faced a choice to “change or die”.
Deputy leader Lucy Powell, however, backed him, saying Labour must listen and change its approach but that the party “does not do hostile takeovers”. Starmer said on Friday he was “hurt” by the results but would not walk away. Speaking to broadcasters in south London, he described the outcome as “really tough” and said he was “not going to sugarcoat that”, but insisted he would not “plunge the country into chaos”.
“The right thing to do is to rebuild and show the path forward,” he said, adding that he would set out the path ahead in the coming days, including “clarity about my convictions and my values”. He also said his government had made “a number of really important calls in the last couple of years”, citing the economy, public services and the Iran war.
The fallout follows Labour losing more than 1,400 seats and control of both the Senedd in Wales and 37 councils across England. Starmer said his focus now is on convincing voters that “things can get better and will”. In Scotland, UK Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey urged the SNP not to allow politics to be “distracted” by another independence referendum.
He said the Scottish Parliament now has its highest-ever number of MSPs who support independence, with 73 from the SNP and Scottish Greens, but argued the SNP had “no mandate” for a new vote because it did not win a majority and “went backwards in vote share and numbers of MSPs elected”.
Starmer said he will detail how he intends to rebuild in the coming days. For now, the return of Brown and Harman signals an attempt to draw on party experience as Labour assesses how to recover from the losses.