Keir Starmer embraces Labour's old glories to save his skin

LondonKeir Starmer is living on borrowed time. He doesn't know it yet, he doesn't want to admit it, and he intends to fight with all his might, but the result of Thursday's local elections in England, along with those in the national Parliaments of Scotland and Wales, have left the British prime minister mortally wounded. As a defibrillator and last resort to avoid the inevitable, Starmer, who has been practically rudderless since he won the elections, less than two years ago, has dusted off two of the old glories of New Labour.

In a political move that has surprised everyone in Westminster – and implicitly demonstrated a lack of his own ideas – the prime minister appointed former Prime Minister Gordon Brown this Saturday as special envoy for global finance and cooperation, a part-time, unpaid position. He has also appointed former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman as special envoy for women and girls, to combat sexist violence, an expression that in the United Kingdom is not even formulated in these terms.

Will all this be enough to silence the criticism he is facing following the electoral catastrophe? It seems difficult. The reason is that the final balance of the electoral "super Thursday" has been devastating: almost 1,500 local councillors lost to the far-right. It has been a huge blow in Scotland, where Nigel Farage's far-right has also secured the same number of MPs (17) as Labour, and where they have not been able to beat the Scottish National Party (SNP, 58 MPs), who will govern for the fifth consecutive time.

The collapse has been even more humiliating in Wales, where the Plaid Cymru separatists

have won. This collapse is particularly painful, as Wales is one of the cradle territories of the Labour movement. The party has stopped governing, which it had been doing since 1999. It hasn't even managed to secure second place, which has gone to Farage's party.

Starmer having himself photographed this Saturday in Downing Street gardens with Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman was a way of sending a signal to his critics, who are increasingly numerous and fed up with his mistakes and hesitations: "Look, I have the support of the party's sacred cows," he told them, after admitting, in a press conference early this morning, that his executive has made "unnecessary mistakes" in the twenty-two months it has been in power.

Mistakes, above all, by Starmer himself, who has inexplicably renounced explicitly progressive policies, which has shown that after coming to power he has shed the mask of a man of the left with which he had presented himself for the leadership of the party.

In the speech in which on Friday afternoon the leader of the Labour party in Wales, Eluned Morgan, announced her resignation, she said: "Voters have shown great frustration with the Labour party. We need to be the party of workers again. We need the government to change course. We need the wealth of this nation to be distributed more equally". Starmer, however, does not seem affected by her words. In an article published this Saturday by The Guardian, the premier states that he will continue in office, but that he does not intend to modify the government's policy, "neither to the left nor to the right". The left-wing electorate that traditionally supports Labour accuses him of having shifted to the right and of a lack of project and political vision.

Challenge from Manchester

The recourse to Brown and Harman has not greatly impressed the backbench Labour MPs. More than thirty have publicly expressed in recent hours the need for Starmer to step aside. Among the most critical, the one who has gone furthest has been MP Catherine West, for one of the north London constituencies. In an interview with the BBC, West stated that if none of the government members launch a challenge against Starmer's leadership before Monday, she herself will do so, and has asked MPs to support her in initiating the leadership contest. To do this, however, 20% of MPs - at least 81 - must join the manoeuvre.

For now, no government minister has raised their voice against the premier. And they have warned their colleagues against going too far. Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Presidency, recalled the chaos of the Conservative Party after Brexit, which saw Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss burned through in record time, contributing to the discrediting of the Tories and, ultimately, to the defeat of July 2024. In this case, however, Catherine West's move seems not only doomed to failure, but also, at least momentarily, would strengthen Starmer's position, as happened with some of the challenges faced by Theresa May or Boris Johnson.

This Monday, Starmer is scheduled to give an important speech in which he will announce an even closer rapprochement with the European Union. The premier, a staunch anti-Brexiteer and aware of the economic damage that the divorce with the EU has caused the country, still wants to square the circle: improve the economy without integrating into the single market or, even less so, hinting at a return to the EU. This is what defines him politically: total ambiguity, in this case for fear of Nigel Farage and the voters who have supported the far-right, and who largely coincide with those who voted against the EU ten years ago.

The ambiguity that accompanies him, and Starmer's manifest unpopularity, which many Labour MPs have denounced during the campaign, mean that neither Brown nor Harman can save him from his destiny. It is a matter of time. Meanwhile, in the north of England, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who appears as an alternative to the premier, awaits his opportunity. To make it a reality, however, he would first have to win a seat in the House of Commons.