Sir Keir Starmer: From high-flying barrister to the brink of Number 10 – what you need to know about the Labour leader
Sir Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2020 after its worst general election defeat since 1935.
The result triggered a Labour leadership election, in which Sir Keir emerged as the clear frontrunner. He replaced Jeremy Corbyn, who had led the party since 2015.
Sir Keir has made it his mission to drag the Labour Party back to the centre and make it “electable” again, in a project that has won him both praise and criticism.
A key part of changing Labour for Sir Keir has been tackling the antisemitism problem that existed under Mr Corbyn’s leadership – something he promised to “tear out by its roots”.
Almost four years into the role, opinion polls point to him being the country’s next prime minister after the general election.
Early life
Sir Keir was born in Southwark, south London on 2 September 1962.
It has been widely reported he is named after Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party and its first leader (1906-1908).
However, a 2021 biography of Sir Keir notes he said in a 2015 interview that he had no evidence for this, as he had never spoken to his parents about it.
With three other siblings, he grew up in “pebble-dash semi” in Oxted, a small town in Surrey, where his father Rodney was a toolmaker and his mother Josephine worked as a nurse in the NHS.
The Labour leader has described how his mother suffered from Still’s disease, a rare type of inflammatory arthritis that meant she was unable to walk, talk or eat.
She died in 2015 – just a few weeks after he was elected as the Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras.
Sir Keir has described his relationship with his father, who died three years later in 2018, as “distant” and has said he regrets not having a closer bond with him.
He has frequently spoken about how his father felt disrespected because of his occupation, something that has driven his desire for a sense of “respect” in society.
Sir Keir adopted his parents’ politics and joined the Labour Party as a teenager.
After leaving Reigate Grammar School – where contemporaries included Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) and Andrew Cooper, who later became a Tory peer and director of strategy to Lord David Cameron – he studied law at Leeds University.
He was the first member of his family to go to university, and also gained a postgraduate degree at Oxford.
Legal career
The Labour leader has spoken about how he realised that law and justice was a place to effect social change.
After leaving university, Sir Keir emerged as an ideological lawyer on the left.
He helped set up and edit Socialist Alternatives, a radical left-wing journal that has been described as Trotskyite – and which he jokingly has said “only sold about five copies”.
In 1987, he began working as a barrister specialising in human rights, before going on to be head of the Crown Prosecution Service and director of public prosecutions (DPP) from 2008 to 2013.
During his high-profile career, he undertook work including the high-profile McLibel case.
Sir Keir provided free legal advice to Helen Steel and David Morris, whom McDonald’s sued for libel after they produced a pamphlet that was critical of the company.
Sir Keir also worked with the National Union of Mineworkers to prevent the Conservatives’ pit closures and offered free legal advice to protestors demonstrating against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax.
One of the more quirky features of the Labour leader’s backstory is the rumour – since denied by author Helen Fielding – that he was the inspiration for the character of Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones books.
While working as a lawyer, he met his wife, Victoria, who works for the NHS and whom he married in 2007.
Together they have two children, who attend Arsenal games with him, where he is a season ticket holder. He regularly plays five-a-side.
‘Sometimes you have to be ruthless’
Much has been made about Sir Keir’s transition from a more socialist past to his current centrist position
He has come in for criticism for dropping a number of leadership campaign pledges – including promises to increase income tax, nationalise most public services and scrap tuition fees.
But Sir Keir has said the country now finds itself in a “different financial position” because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conservative opponents have also sought to use his time as a senior member of Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet to question his judgement.
Sir Keir was shadow Brexit secretary for four years and was said to be a key figure in the formulation of the party’s second referendum policy that was part of its 2019 manifesto.
While socialist policies ran through his campaign to be Labour leader, it is the quest to change the party that has defined his time at the helm.
“Sometimes you have to be ruthless to be a good leader,” he has said.
“I changed the Labour Party. If I’m privileged enough to be given the opportunity, I’ll change the country too.”