Keir Starmer has brought in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as advisers in a move to ease the mounting pressure on the prime minister to resign after the disastrous election results for Labour.

Brown, the former prime minister and long-serving chancellor under Tony Blair, has been made Starmer’s envoy on global finance, with a brief to advise on financial partnerships to help with defence-related investments, particularly with Europe.

Harman, who was Labour’s deputy leader under Brown, will be the prime minister’s adviser on women and girls, focusing on tackling violence and improving economic opportunities.

While the roles are part-time and unpaid, there is deliberate symbolism in Starmer gathering Labour heavyweights around him as he battles to save his job, particularly with the optics of Brown being pictured with him at Downing Street on Saturday morning.

With the bulk of the votes now counted from Thursday’s series of elections, Labour lost more than 1,400 councillors across England, shedding support to Reform UK and the Greens in traditional heartlands.

In Wales, the party lost power for the first time, plummeting to just nine Senedd seats behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, while also losing ground in the Scottish parliament.

While none of Starmer’s cabinet have yet moved, other Labour MPs have called on him to set a date to hand over the leadership, including Clive Betts, the long-serving Sheffield South East MP, and Debbie Abrahams, for Oldham East and Saddleworth.

Abrahams told the BBC on Saturday morning she hoped Starmer would “always put the country first” given the electoral threat from Reform.

“We have to recognise the dangers that we’re in now, that on this trajectory it doesn’t look good.” Asked how quickly he should consider departing, Abrahams said: “I think it is a matter of months.”

In a post on X, Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP for Folkestone who was first elected in 2024, said there “must be an orderly transition of leadership well before the local elections next year”.

He added: “Some say we will look like the Tories if we change leader. But would they have done better if they’d kept Boris in despite partygate? Or kept Truss after she crashed the economy?”

Starmer has been defended by others in Labour, including Harman and Lucy Powell, the party’s deputy leader who told the BBC it was time to end “this incessant speculation” about Starmer’s position.

“What I would say to people is, thinking that setting out some kind of timetable would put to bed issues of leadership, is actually the wrong conclusion here, because all that would do is [set] the starting gun of a, quite honestly, very distracting and ongoing debate about leadership,” Powell said.

Powell confirmed that she would want Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, to be allowed to stand for parliament, but said this should not involve Burnham then challenging Starmer. “We don’t do hospital takeovers in the Labour party. It’s not what we’re about.”

Starmer will try to relaunch his premiership on Monday with a speech expected to set out a call for closer ties with the EU.

Brown’s new role ties in with this in part. A Downing Street statement said the former prime minister would be “tasked with developing new international finance partnerships that can support defence and security-related investment, including measures that underpin the UK’s relationship with Europe”.

A No 10 statement said Harman would “advise the PM on how to galvanise government to deliver for women and girls”.

It added: “She will work with ministers across government to drive an impactful agenda focusing on tackling violence against women and girls, unlocking economic opportunity and improving representation.”