As the prime minister picks himself up from the drubbing Labour received in Thursday’s elections and prepares the nation to meet the coming economic storm caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he cannot allow his government to be paralysed by the leadership issue.
Hence his drafting into 10 Downing Street of two respected figures of the party’s recent past.
Gordon Brown has been given the tinny sounding title of the prime minister’s “special envoy on global finance and cooperation”, but his authority as a former prime minister and long-serving chancellor is reassuring. At a time when the world economy is in a fragile state, waiting for the effect of higher oil prices to hit these shores, it makes sense to have someone with the intellectual heft and confidence of Mr Brown to help shore up the defences.
It is also wise to divert Harriet Harman back into the fold from her second career as a podcaster, in which the temptation must always be to criticise the government. She can lend the credibility of a lifelong contribution to the advance of women’s equality to the government’s drive to protect women and girls from violence.
Of course, it could be a sign of weakness that Sir Keir feels he has to bring in figures from outside the Commons in advisory roles instead of promoting new talent from within. It is not as if the current cabinet is the strongest selection possible from the available field, but Sir Keir obviously feels that a reshuffle risks destabilising his position.
In any case, it makes sense to keep Rachel Reeves at the Treasury, and to reinforce her with the great clunking fist of her predecessor, rather than to take a risk with the markets by moving her. Ms Reeves is the co-author with Sir Keir of many of this government’s most serious mistakes, but most of the pressure from within the Labour Party is to replace her with someone who would be less fiscally responsible. Sir Keir is right, above all, to resist the obvious ambition for the chancellor’s job lurking within the breast of Ed Miliband, his former mentor.
Instead the prime minister has drafted in Mr Brown in an attempt to restore the confidence of business leaders in the government. Many in the business community were favourable to Ms Reeves before the general election but have lost faith in her; this is her chance to rebuild.
Sir Keir has turned to old Labour hands before with mixed results. He brought in Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, as national security adviser. He is generally thought to have done an outstanding job (except in negotiating the Chagos deal). But he also recruited Peter Mandelson, who in turn had been recruited by Mr Brown to reinforce his premiership in 2008, and that did not go so well.
Nevertheless, the appointments of Mr Brown and Baroness Harman are sensible attempts to pre-empt some of the inevitable leadership speculation that follows a bad set of midterm elections. It was important, too, that Sir Keir rejected the idea of a lurch to the left, saying that he would not be “tacking right or left”.
But there is more to do in communicating a renewed sense of purpose in the list of measures proposed in the King’s Speech on Wednesday. This does not come naturally to the prime minister, whose article in The Guardian today was full of vacuous declarations: “This time things will be different. We must break with the status quo once and for all by building a stronger and fairer country.”
Never mind these vapid generalities: Sir Keir probably has one last chance over the next year or so to demonstrate that he is protecting people from the worst of the instability threatening the world. As he attempts to do so, Mr Brown is a good person to have by his side.
