Will Starmer's old Labour tribute strategy rescue him from the abyss? Probably not, but there's a logic to it | Gaby Hinsliff

"There comes a time, in the dying days of a relationship, when you start to become irritated merely by the sound of your partner's breathing. It's not kind, and it's not necessarily rational, but it is what it is. Nothing they can do is going to fix it, and nothing they say makes it better even if they suddenly start promising to do all the things you've been begging them to do for years. It all just seems too little, too late."

"His response to the bloodbath of last week's local elections, in which he brought back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as advisers while promising something bigger and bolder than the creeping caution of the 2024 manifesto, was a promise to change aimed squarely at the MPs threatening to oust him and yet somehow it seems only to have deepened the frustration. Most would love nothing better than to get closer to Europe, as he promised; many have been screaming for months that, as he acknowledged, people are crying out for change to come faster."

"Britain really does need to spend billions more on its defence, and if Starmer had said six months ago that Brown would be helping break the deadlock within the government over how to do it, that might have seemed inspired. Even when the idea of making Harman a kind of roving minister for rooting out misogyny was first mooted back in February, in response to fury over the release of emails between Peter Mandelson and the serial sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, it might just have made a difference."

"But to save these things up and present them now, like a bunch of wilted petrol station flowers, to save his skin? That somehow just adds insult to injury. If he had done all this befor"

Irritation can arise when a relationship nears its end, because nothing the other person does seems to fix the underlying problem and promises arrive too late. Labour’s parliamentary party now faces a similar sense of frustration with Keir Starmer after local election losses. Starmer responded by bringing back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as advisers and promising something bigger and bolder than the 2024 manifesto’s caution. Many MPs want closer ties with Europe and faster change, but the appointments of New Labour veterans add to the sense of blocked progress. The need for major additional defence spending is acknowledged, yet delayed action and timing aimed at protecting Starmer’s position are seen as insulting rather than inspiring.

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