{"id":575912,"date":"2026-05-10T05:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/575912\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T05:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:44:11","slug":"starmer-has-till-monday-to-save-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/575912\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer has ’till Monday’ to save himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

In normal circumstances, Keir Starmer\u2019s appointment of Gordon Brown as his special envoy on global finance and Harriet Harman as his adviser on women and girls would be seen by Labour MPs as sensible.<\/p>\n

Tapping the wisdom of the party\u2019s elders to solve important problems would be viewed as competent if dull technocratic government. <\/p>\n

However, these are not normal circumstances for the Prime Minister<\/a>. His MPs see him as responsible for yesterday\u2019s electoral catastrophe. He indeed has insisted he does take full responsibility. <\/p>\n

And that is why the appointments are in fact incendiary.<\/p>\n

Because they are seen as – at best – irrelevant to the crisis faced by the government, and for many MPs and ministers they are provocative, an insult, a manifestation – in the words of one minister – \u201cthat he simply doesn\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what one senior and influential member of the government told me:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Harriet and Gordon thing and his Guardian article [in which he said the government should neither move left or right] has annoyed Labour MPs even more. It\u2019s tone deaf. I think people give him until Monday to actually show he gets it or he\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, this minister would often try to defend the PM. Not any more.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not altogether surprising, given that few Reform voters are likely to say \u201cI was thinking of voting for Nigel Farage but I\u2019ve changed my mind now that Keir has tapped Gordon to create an international off-balance-sheet finance facility for defence spending.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another minister told me that the preference of MPs and Labour\u2019s members would be for Starmer to stay and turn around the performance of the government, but they were increasingly doubtful he was capable of doing this.<\/p>\n

This minister\u2019s mood, and that of his colleagues, he said, \u201cwas increasingly of despair\u201d. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest problem was that Starmer \u201cis seemingly unable to give a clear coherent sense of direction for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters will forgive you many of your mistakes if you can tell them where you want to take them. But he has been incapable of doing that, and none of us know whether he ever can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those members of the Cabinet who are genuine loyalists talk about him on the basis of hypothesis and guesswork.<\/p>\n

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter <\/a>for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.<\/p>\n

None of them seem to actually know what makes him tick or what he wants (one told me he was planning to set out his own policies more publicly in the hope that perhaps the PM would adopt them). <\/p>\n

In that sense, Starmer seems more isolated than any prime minister I\u2019ve ever known. <\/p>\n

A very big test for him comes on Monday, when he is expected to give a speech that will be billed as his agenda for the rest of the parliament, but is in practice a plea to his MPs to give him a last chance. <\/p>\n

I asked a minister what MPs would need to hear to be clear that he does understand their concerns, that he \u201cgets it\u201d. <\/p>\n

This was the reply. \u201cI mean god knows because I dont think he does. It\u2019s not anything anyone else can tell him it has to come from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that, in a nutshell, is why Starmer is in so much trouble. <\/p>\n

From Westminster to Washington DC – our political experts are across all the latest key talking points. Listen to the latest episode below…<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In normal circumstances, Keir Starmer\u2019s appointment of Gordon Brown as his special envoy on global finance and Harriet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-575912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}