Keir Starmer appoints Gordon Brown as adviser after election flop

LONDON: With Labour losing control of 36 councils and 1,436 councillors in the local polls and finishing second with Reform UK in the Scottish parliament, embattled PM Keir Starmer brought back former Labour PM Gordon Brown and appointed him as his “special envoy on global finance and cooperation” to “work with our international allies to build a stronger Britain”.Conservative MP Andrew Griffith tweeted a meme of Brown on a DeLorean outside No. 10 with the words “Back to the Past”, saying: “As a ‘Hail Mary pass’ goes, bringing back Labour’s biggest loser, who sold £40 billion of Britain’s gold before leading Labour to a general election defeat, probably needs a bit of work…”So far, 30 Labour MPs, including Barry Gardiner and Nadia Whittome, have called for Starmer to resign. But 80 Labour MPs would need to back anyone wanting to challenge his leadership under party rules. On TV, voters said they were fed up with the high cost of living, spiralling taxes, squeezed living standards and illegal immigration.Reform UK by Saturday night, with just four councils left to declare, had gained 1,449 councillors and 14 councils, and the Greens gained 397 councillors and four councils. Labour MP Dan Carden wrote on X: “Britain’s working and lower middle-class communities” see the Labour party “as run by and for progressive elites… the lanyard class”.Birmingham City council went from Labour-run to no overall control with a whole range of parties and 13 Independents, mostly Muslims on a Gaza ticket, winning. The alliance of Independent candidates was organised by activists Akhmed Yakoob and Shakeel Afsar. Afsar was part of the mob that descended on the Smethwick Hindu temple in Birmingham in 2022.