A practical, safe pair of hands or a drab flip-flopper? Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is a former human rights lawyer who is vying to be Britain’s next prime minister. When Starmer took over the party three years ago after socialist Jeremy Corbyn’s dismal tenure, he swore to unite it and put it back on the path to victory. The 61-year-old has brought the main opposition party back to the center, calmed unrest on the left, and eradicated anti-Semitism inside its ranks, transforming Labour into an electable alternative. “He has absolutely put Labour in a place where it could win the next general election, and a lot of people thought that was, really ambitious and quite unlikely,” political scientist Karl Pike told AFP.
Labor will hold its annual conference in Liverpool, northwest England, this weekend, with double-digit poll leads ahead of a general election next year. Many analysts attribute this to the Conservative Party’s tumultuous governance, which has resulted in three new prime ministers in four years, as a result of instability over Brexit and the Covid epidemic. A cost-of-living problem and widespread strikes are also considered as contributing to Britons’ desire for change after 13 years of Tory rule, rather than overwhelming support for Starmer.
A sober, serious, and boring politician with low approval ratings
He does have a low approval rating. “He’s not an inspirational speaker. I mean, he’s not Tony Blair,” said Steven Fielding, a politics expert at the University of Nottingham and Labour party member. “(But) I think Starmer has calculated that if he just presents himself as a sober, serious, boring person after all of the nonsense that’s gone on before… that will just be about enough to get through.”
Starmer, an Arsenal supporter, was born in London as one of four siblings to a toolmaker father and a nursing mother who were both animal lovers who rescued donkeys. “Whenever one of us left home, they replaced us with a donkey,” he used to joke. His odd first name was a tribute to Labour’s founding founder, Keir Hardie, by his socialist parents. He studied violin in school with Norman Cook, the former Housemartins bassist who went on to become DJ Fatboy Slim. After studying law at the universities of Leeds and Oxford, Starmer became involved in radical causes, defending trade unionists and anti-McDonald’s activists.
Critics accuse him of being indecisive and failing to articulate a clear vision for the country
The married father-of-two knows fellow human rights lawyer Amal Clooney from their work at the same law firm. In 2003, he began his transition to the establishment with a role ensuring Northern Ireland police followed human rights legislation. The then Labour administration named him director of public prosecutions for England and Wales five years later.
Between 2008 and 2013, he managed the prosecution of MPs for misusing their allowances, journalists for phone hacking, and teenage rioters in England during the 2011 turmoil. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and elected to parliament in 2015, holding a seat in left-wing north London. His mother died of a rare joint condition just weeks before he was elected.
In a TV interview in 2021, he sobbed as he recalled how her agonizing death “broke” his father. During the EU referendum campaign in 2016, Starmer joined a Labour MP rebellion against Corbyn’s perceived lack of leadership. It failed, and later that year he returned to the top team as Labour’s Brexit spokesman, a position he held until April 2020, when he will follow Corbyn. Tories have attacked Starmer for abandoning several pledges he made during his successful leadership campaign, including the elimination of university tuition fees.
Critics accuse him of being indecisive and failing to articulate a clear vision for the country. His supporters, on the other hand, believe he is correct to hold his cards close to his breast until an election date is announced. “He probably is right to be cautious but I think his egg is about to hatch now and we’ll see more from him in the coming months,” Dave Mullaney, a 54-year-old Labour party activist in the southwestern city of Bristol, told AFP.
