Starmer Appoints Gordon Brown as Global Finance Envoy and Harriet Harman to Advise on Violence Against Women

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appointed former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a special envoy on global finance and hired former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman as an adviser on tackling violence against women and girls. Downing Street said Brown and Baroness Harman met Starmer in Downing Street before the roles were announced.

The appointments followed UK election results on Friday in which the Scottish National Party claimed a sweeping victory in Scotland and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged south of the border.

Brown will advise on how global finance cooperation can help to achieve boosting the country's security and resilience. Baroness Harman will advise the PM on how to galvanise government to deliver for women and girls. Her role will draw on work with women across Parliament to identify action needed to tackle misogyny and deliver greater opportunity for women in parliamentary and public life.

Gordon Brown served as Chancellor before becoming Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010. He took a leading role in the international response to the financial crisis of 2008. Baroness Harman was leader of the House of Commons during Gordon Brown's tenure as prime minister and served as Labour deputy leader from 2007 to 2015.

Sir Keir Starmer posted a promotional video on social media showing him meeting Brown alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Baroness Harman in 10 Downing Street's back garden. "Together, we will build a stronger and fairer Britain," Sir Keir wrote in the social media post above the video. The appointments came as Starmer's authority tottered after the election losses.

Up to 30 Labour MPs said publicly that Sir Keir Starmer should resign or agree to set out the process for an orderly transition to a new leadership. Paula Barker told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that she had enormous respect for both Gordon and Harriet but would have had even more respect if they had declined the offer of non-jobs and told the prime minister that it's time for a change and he should set out his timetable.

Clive Betts, the MP for Sheffield South East, told the BBC that Sir Keir should step down in the not too distant future for the good of the country and the government.

Clive Betts said that people have made their mind up and he did not think rebooting and refreshing was going to make any difference because the public by and large have stopped listening to Keir. Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, said she thought it was a matter of months before Sir Keir would step down as prime minister.

She said that Sir Keir has said that he would always put the country first and we must recognise the dangers that we are in now.

She said the party needed to reflect, to hear, to listen and warned that if Labour did not improve and start doing better we are going to see Nigel Farage walking up Downing Street in three years' time. Lucy Powell said that she thought we would look ludicrous right now as a government to turn in on ourselves and start debating leadership.

The appointments signal an attempt to refresh the government with veteran figures even as discontent bursts into the open.

Brown and Baroness Harman are influential and respected within Labour, yet their return has left some ministers and MPs baffled about how figures from Labour's past represent the change Starmer has promised.