Paddy O’Connell

John Major did it as well.

And Gordon Brown went to see Keir Starmer today through the front door of Number 10.

I nearly fell off my chair.

So if you want as a government to look like you are surging forward, promising change, you're going to be different, you're addressing the future, you're cracking on...

Bringing back someone who was in power 16 years ago and who lost an election, I don't really see what the question is that Gordon Brown is the answer to.

Now, if you were saying, ah, there is a massive global financial crisis and we are on the hunt specifically for someone to come and help us deal with that.

then Gordon Brown may well be someone who is in your rolodex.

He's obviously, or younger newscasters might not know what that is either.

Somewhere where people used to write down lots of phone numbers and contacts.

Gordon Brown is a highly respected figure in the Labour Party, right?

No question about that.

I'm not doing down Gordon Brown in any way.

But the optics of a prime minister who's in deep trouble, bringing back a prime minister who never won a general election, actually then lost another general election.

and kind of boasting about it, and this is basically the first image that the country sees the day after a complete shellacking, is Keir Starmer on the steps of Downing Street with Gordon Brown.

Like, where's that going to go?

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

Because, yeah, you're right to detach these things, aren't you, Laura, for newscasters, in that, of course, you can make an argument that two people like Harriet Harman, who's also been offered an envoy role, and Gordon Brown... Which she was offered last year, too.

Indeed so.

Indeed so.

Might have something to offer within those areas of expertise.