Give him his due: Keir Starmer still knows how to surprise us. When faced with local and devolved election results presenting an existential threat, both to him as Prime Minister and to his party, he rose to the challenge and… appointed two relics of New Labour as advisers.
Yes, Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman are highly regarded in the party, one as a former chancellor and prime minister, and the other as a long-serving (and long-suffering) deputy leader. But what on earth is the question to which they are the answer?
Starmer’s stale administration needs an injection of dynamism, not stodgy figures of the past. As if reheating the New Labour project – in the form of Peter Mandelson – hasn’t gone badly enough for Starmer?
Call me cynical, but this looks like poorly thought-out deflection: ‘Hey, everybody! Don’t look at the election results, look at this new shiny thing!’
So feebly and cack-handedly has this announcement been made, so irrelevant to the immediate needs of Labour are these appointments, that it can only inflame the criticism that MPs already aim at Starmer.
Despite their protestations, they all know what needs to be done. Yet so far only a handful of backbenchers have put their heads above the parapet to demand that Starmer steps down as Labour leader and Prime Minister.
It's not an easy job, telling a PM that he needs to go, as I know from experience. Gordon Brown has been made Sir Keir Starmer’s envoy on global finance. Harriet Harman is now Sir Keir's adviser on women and girls.
In 2009, I told Brown – now Starmer’s ‘Special Envoy on Global Finance’ – to his face, before fellow MPs, that if he didn’t resign then he would lose Labour the next election. I was proved right: small consolation for the dismal purgatory of the opposition benches.
Yet today Labour’s would-be knife wielders shilly-shally, hesitating to strike the fatal blow. What are they waiting for? Two words: someone else.
These brave tribunes of the people are too frit to act in case their own careers are damaged – notwithstanding last night’s forlorn attempt by backbencher Catherine West.
They want someone to go over the top first and only when the dirty work is done will they follow them into no-man’s land.
The big question is who should replace Starmer. When there is no obvious figurehead in the wings, and genuine doubt a new leader can resurrect Labour’s dire poll ratings, what would be the point of replacing him?
Nonetheless, the contenders for the crown are compelling. One potential is Angela Rayner, who owes much of her status to Jeremy Corbyn, who plucked her from obscurity for a Shadow Cabinet role when much of his front bench resigned in protest at his leadership.
Her dispute with HMRC is keeping her on the back benches (for now). Yet as the darling of the Left, she would prove hopeless at reining in the restive Parliamentary Labour Party, which has made such a mockery of Starmer’s majority in the Commons.
Wes Streeting, however, could take the party by the scruff of the neck. He is, by a country mile, the most able candidate – a pragmatic Health Secretary, tough on the unions and honest about his mistakes, such as working for trans rights charity Stonewall.
He would broaden Labour’s appeal beyond its soft-Left support, which is why party members view him with deep suspicion.
The reputation of Andy Burnham among members has improved, mainly as he had the sense to extricate himself from Parliament in 2017, and so avoided the battles of the Corbyn era. He is a favourite to win any contest.
The problem: the King in the North is trapped in his keep, surrounded by a moat of Reform turquoise. Nigel Farage’s party has done well in Manchester, so any by-election in the region, in which the mayor would hope to secure his seat, could blow up in his face.
The only way Labour can stem the flow of support to Reform is for its next leader to get real on immigration and to limit asylum seekers targeting our southern shores. None of Streeting, Burnham or Rayner would relish that job.
The path of least resistance in the Labour Party is always the preferred one: tell members what they want, not need, to hear. If that path is chosen, then replacing Starmer, while necessary, will turn out to be a colossal waste of time, and it will then be up to the electorate to cast its judgment.
