UK PM Starmer, aiming for leadership reset, says former PM Gordon Brown to become adviser
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-starmer-names-former-pm-gordon-brown-special-envoy-global-finance-2026-05-09/
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
UK PM Starmer, aiming for leadership reset, says former PM Gordon Brown to become adviser
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-starmer-names-former-pm-gordon-brown-special-envoy-global-finance-2026-05-09/
Posted by pppppppppppppppppd
32 Comments
Labour clearly needs to go even further to the right. Its their only hope of beating reform. The left will always bite the bullet and vote for them, so this is really their only option, as long as you ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Smart move from an optics POV. It signals that moving forward, it’s not just more of the same, because things are different now, and we’ll need time to see the effect it has etc. which may offset the immediate calls for resignation.
Whether or not it makes a material difference to satisfying the various groups Starmer is trying to appease, is anybody’s guess.
I give it 6 months before he throws Gordon under a bus.
People who loathe Starmer won’t suddenly change their minds and vote for him. It’s simply never going to happen.
Labour leadership is incredibly self-deluded. They’ll burn down the entire Labour party rather than step aside for someone else to rescue it.
The media despise Brown because he’s one of a handful of actually civic-minded politicians with an ethical backbone who manages to be pragmatic while remaining true to his idealism. No doubt this news will be painted as world-ending by the rags and the online army but it’s honestly a solid appointment.
Prior to the 2024 election, Starmer asked Brown to conduct a proper review of the union, the current British constitution, the future of devolution, with the goal of setting out an ambitious plan to ensure the constitutional challenges of the Tories post-Brexit would be a thing of the past.
Brown produced his report. Starmer completely ignored pretty much all of it.
Yesterday, Labour got utterly destroyed in Wales, coming a very distant third. Almost everyone in Welsh Labour is pointing to UK Labours failure to give them anything on the future of devolution.
I am sympathetic to the notion that Brown is a wise man who should be given a job. I struggle with the logic of doing so while completely ignoring the last thing you asked him to do
Fuck that. Gordon Brown should be PM. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and he’s the only PM I can think of in 40 years who ~~isn’t evil.~~ seemed to care about people.
Edited to be less hyperbolic
Rishi turned to the Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, we’ve seen this strategy play out just a few years ago. Didn’t end well
Fantastic appointment. Already seen people on Instagram saying ‘BUT HE SOLD OUR GOLD’ as if they have any fucking clue how to run an economy. Brown was fantastic with what he had in front of him.
A good appointment which will, sadly, be very easy for the media to spin as desperation.
Keep Tony Blair out piece of s***m! definitely put in Gordon Brown!
Well better than Burnham and He Who Shall Not Be Named but the party does seem fixated on old has beens from the past.
People want a vision of the future not continual reinterpretations of the past.
As usual, Starmer is changing everyone around him while missing the point that he is the problem. The issue is that he is the best of a very bad bunch
I am vehemently against this labour government but I voted for Brown in 2010. If the press hadn’t blasted him relentlessly the UK would be in a much better position. As it was the Lib Dems came and stole a load of votes with promises they never even really attempted to keep when they got into the coalition with Cameron.
If you look at what the government has achieved since the election, there’s a lot of good and you can start to see the green shoots of recovery. Kier had made a number of mistakes, the biggest for me is the handling from start to finish of the Mandelson saga. He’s reported to not engage with his team, and is totally a technocrat in approach. Which makes him distance and cold. Overall he’s not done a bad job, but he’s lost a lot of support, and I can’t see him regaining it. He’s got an uphill battle with how his portrayed in the media.
He’s apparently also bringing Harriet Harman to advise on women & girls strategy. Both are principled, intelligent politicians
Imb4 Starmer mentions it’s a “Great Reset” and everyone loses their minds.
I think this should be done more regularly tbh – as in, former PMs with experience should become cabinet ministers and whatnot. Starmer could step down and become Foreign Minister for instance, since he’s good at that. It’s how they do it in the Nordics.
Somewhere in Yorkshire, Brian Blesssed has just shouted ‘Gordon’s Alive’
I can only hope the worst for everyone who works at the Tony Blair Institute! Bring Gordon Brown in is the first thing the PM has done correctly in a long time.
Let’s remember that the Tony Blair Institute is just a money front for Oracle Corporation, & are the same people who have now bought CNN!
Let’s not forget that Tony Blair claimed God sent him into Iraq, when we all know it was because he was beholden to Rupert Murdoch.
And let’s remember how much Birmingham Council wasted on its Oracle system!
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To be fair Brown handled the immediate banking crisis better than a lot of leaders did.. The recapitalisations and coordinated intervention helped stop a full financial collapse and other countries did copy much of it..
What came after though, not so good ..
Brown still stayed within the old *sound finance* framing horse shit instead of really breaking with it and pushing a deeper restructuring of the economy..
So he was better than the austerity crowd that followed but not exactly the kind of transformative shift that was required..
Reform has so far won 1,445 seats and the Tories have still got 773 seats
If we entertain the common retort from Reforms opponents that “Reform are just the Tories” then Reform currently has 2218 votes so far in this election and the results are still being counted
That’s not good for Labour, Labour can’t just scoff at this and mock Reform because what we’ve just found out is the only thing potentially holding off a Farage government is the vote being split between two different shades of blue and if Labour supporters are seriously saying Reform and the Tories are the same then logically there’s nothing stopping them forming a coalition government if Farage comes up short some votes in a General Election
So whatever Starmer is planning he actually might want to do it fast because these were only the local elections and yet the results have shown a major political shift so momentous that even Red Wall heartlands may not even be safe
It’s a bit rich to wheel Brown back in as the grown-up in the room after completely shelving the last massive report he handed over. You can’t keep ignoring his constitutional blueprint, watch Wales implode, and then pretend a new envoy role is a fresh start. Feels like Starmer wants the credibility of Brown’s reputation without any of the actual messy reform work. Maybe actually read the last report before giving him another brief.
WE JUST NEED TO RESET THE LABOUR PARTY AGAIN DON’T ASK FOR CHANGES.
Is this Starmer just future-proofing by having someone to throw under the bus the next time he fucks up?
To me either starmer goes or he completely overhauls whose giving him advice and changes how party operates. Also overhauls their comms department they’re awful at getting positive out there
I kinda want education education education style stuff back to labour. All anti immigration and transphobic stuff is depressing and doesn’t really give anyone hope for the future or sense of unity. Only the Miliband energy infrastructure works has given me some hope and other policies like renters rights. More politicians like this influencing party and being vocal as possible about actual issues instead of reacting to farage
Jesus Christ….imagine bringing back this decrepit fucking cunt! Did he not learn from Mandleson FFS!
Who will Starmer bring back next? Will he exhume John Prescott LOL
Does this mean we are heading for Alastair Campbell being special envoy on truth.
How this country could do with Jezza Corbyn right about now.
It’s nice to see Gordon rolling up his sleeves again, even at his age. I think Brown is still very capable to do this appointment. He’s a very smart brilliant man. He’s wasn’t so much a brilliant leader, he always strikes me as neurodivergent like myself, socially he is a bit awkward but he’s better when he’s personally looking at the detail and making ideas. I remember he was ahead of the curve when the banking crisis happened.