Keir Starmer has a severe case of New Labour nostalgia. His decision last year to give Peter Mandelson a job nearly cost him his own. This weekend, with his job on the line again, Starmer doubled down: handing out government roles to Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman.

After the election defeat of 2010, Labour repudiated the Blair and Brown years. Ed Miliband — who replaced Brown as leader — stripped away the New Labour branding, declaring that a “new generation” was now in charge. That was underlined in 2015 when Miliband was replaced by Jeremy Corbyn, the final boss of anti-Blairism.

So why is Starmer’s attitude so different? At a time when his leadership is hanging by a thread, he could have bolstered his position by trailing a new policy or promising promotions for Labour’s rising stars. No doubt that’s coming, but it’s telling that in the first instance, he looked to the past, not the future.

One can understand the temptation. Blair’s victory in 1997 stands in contrast to Starmer’s in 2024 because it wasn’t followed by an immediate collapse in Labour support. Blair went on to win a second and third election in 2001 and 2005. More importantly, those majorities were used to achieve lasting change. The framework of New Labour legislation, including the Human Rights Act, the Constitutional Reform Act and the Equality Act, endured through — and severely constrained — 14 years of Conservative rule.

Starmer can only dream of such a legacy. The next Right-of-centre government won’t even have to reverse his biggest decisions because he’s U-turned on most of them already.

If Starmer hopes to bring back the New Labour golden age by bringing back Brown and Harman, then it’s not just nostalgia he’s succumbed to, but the mentality of a cargo cult.

The original cargo cults developed on remote Pacific islands after the native population came into contact with Westerners and the manufactured goods that the visitors brought with them. In some cases, the islanders tried to summon back the outsiders and their precious “cargo” through acts of ritualistic mimicry — for instance, by making effigies of aircraft or dressing up in imitation of Western garb.

That might seem completely alien to us, but look closer and you see cargo cult thinking in Western societies too — not least in our politics. For years, the Conservatives had their own cult based on memories of Margaret Thatcher. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Liz Truss found herself channelling Thatcher’s iconic looks and photo-ops. Needless to say, this didn’t succeed in bringing back the glory days of Thatcherism.

Keir Starmer has gone even further to conjure up the past, by bringing old heroes out of retirement — Brown and Harman are both 75 — to adorn his Government. This won’t work either, because it ignores the fact that the material conditions that allowed New Labour’s success cannot be recreated. It also didn’t work for Rishi Sunak when he brought back David Cameron as foreign secretary.

Peak New Labour was before the last 25 years of population ageing, mass immigration and declining UK oil revenues. The global financial crisis hadn’t happened yet, nor Brexit, nor Trump, nor Covid, nor Putin’s invasions of Ukraine. It might not have felt like it at the time, but Blair and Brown were playing on easy mode.

Keir Starmer is not. The New Labour model — globalisation plus lavish social spending plus judicial activism — has run out of road. This weekend is proof that he still doesn’t get it.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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