British Prime Minister Keir Starmer named former premier Gordon Brown as his envoy on global finance Saturday, turning to a man credited with shoring up banks during the financial crisis to bolster his support after a crushing local elections defeat. Starmer is on the back foot after his Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his own lawmakers to call on him to quit.
Aiming to reset his leadership and win back party support, Starmer's office announced the appointment of two Labour grandees, Brown, 75, and Harriet Harman, also 75, to his team as advisers.
Brown will seek to drive new investment and hone relations with the European Union, in a bid to boost economic performance and win back votes, while Harman will focus on tackling misogyny and violence against women and girls, creating economic opportunities.
Amid fresh calls for him to resign Saturday from several of his own lawmakers, as the extent of the defeat emerged, Starmer repeated: "I'm not going to walk away from this."
He said he will respond to the message from voters by seeking to convince them their lives will improve, adding that his new hires, Brown and Harman, were part of the plan.
"They're vital to how we strengthen our country and take it forward and provide the opportunities that give people that hope for a better future," he said.
Brown, 75, will join as an adviser on global finance and cooperation, while former Labour deputy leader Harman, 75, will become the prime minister's adviser on women and girls.
Brown's task will be to develop new international finance partnerships that can support defence and security investment, including measures that underpin Britain's relationship with the European Union, a statement said.
As Tony Blair's finance minister, Brown was a key architect of the New Labour project which won the party three consecutive general elections from 1997.
Serving as prime minister himself from 2007-2010, Brown was instrumental in nationalising major banks and stabilising the financial system during the global financial crisis.
Just under two years after a Labour landslide national election victory, voters have turned against Starmer.
Labour losses stood at 1,425 seats as the final votes were counted on Saturday, a bigger defeat than the 1,330 seats lost by former Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party in 2019. May quit three weeks after that result. Against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis compounded by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, Starmer's government has been beset by policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and scandal over the appointment of another Blair-era veteran, Peter Mandelson, as Britain's ambassador to the United States.
"We made unnecessary mistakes," Starmer said on Saturday, before insisting that the right thing now was to "rebuild and show the path forward". While an immediate challenge to Starmer's leadership does not look likely, there are growing calls for him to resign.
More than 20 lawmakers publicly and privately have called on him to set out a timetable for his departure, with former minister Catherine West joining the fray on Saturday.
"His approach is not cutting through, and the results over the past 48 hours are nothing short of disastrous," West said of Starmer on X.
"I know I speak for more Labour people than just myself in wanting him to step aside as our Leader."
Another Labour lawmaker, Clive Betts, told BBC Radio Saturday that he wanted Starmer to step down "in the not too distant future".
