An overview of his 14 years of Conservative Party rule: From Brexit to Liz Truss and Boris Johnson to the future of Britain’s prime minister
But after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, several of them tumultuous — from Brexit, to Boris Johnson, to the economic instability of his successor Liz Truss — Starmer looks likely to benefit from the ruling party’s perceived missteps.
Mr. Starmer has seldom dwelt on the specifics of his legal career, and his personal motives are of course unknowable. But it seems clear, based on his track record, that Mr. Starmer’s outlook began to take shape around the turn of the millennium. By that time, he had gained a reputation as a progressive barrister who worked pro bono for trade unionists and environmentalists. But in 1999 he surprised many of his colleagues by agreeing to defend a British soldier who had shot and killed a Catholic teenager in Belfast. Four years later, he was hired as a human rights adviser to the Northern Irish Policing Board — a role in which he reportedly helped police officers justify the use of guns, water cannons and plastic bullets.
LONDON — The candidate likely to become Britain’s next prime minister is a human rights lawyer who once called for the British monarchy to be abolished, but years later knelt before Charles, then prince of Wales, to be knighted.
He was rumored to be the inspiration for a character in the movies who was handsome. He supports Black Lives Matter.
Keir Starmer: The Biography of a Labour Trade Unionist and the Big McDonald’s Explanation for his Life and Work
Starmer promises, if elected, to restore competency to government, nationalize some railways and utility companies, raise the minimum wage, tax private school tuition, improve the public health system and offer free breakfast in public elementary schools.
His parents were “proper old-fashioned socialists” who may have named their son after Keir Hardie, a 19th century Scottish trade unionist, who founded the Labour Party in 1900, says Tom Baldwin, author of Keir Starmer: The Biography. Starmer said in 2015 that his parents voted for Labour, but never explicitly confirmed who he was named after.
Another hurdle for young Starmer was social class. He lived in a suburb in London. But his family was socialist and blue-collar, and he went to public school.
“His dad [Rodney Starmer] was a toolmaker, whom probably people didn’t understand as being skilled and clever, because they just saw him as working in a factory, and he always resented that — he felt them being snobbish towards him,” Baldwin says.
The Labour candidate has acknowledged having a difficult relationship with his late father. “We didn’t talk. He never said he was proud of what I did. He definitely didn’t say he loved you. The radio interviewer stated that Starmer said it.
Josephine was a nurse in Britain’s National Health Service. She was also chronically ill herself, in and out of the hospital with Still’s disease, an autoinflammatory condition. Her health struggles are something Starmer now recalls often in speeches, as instilling in him the importance of the NHS, which provides free, taxpayer-funded health care for all.
Rumors have been going around for a long time, that Starmer was the inspiration for the love interest of the main character in the book and movie franchise, the brooding lawyer Mark Darcy. Colin Firth plays Starmer in the movie, and he is a human rights lawyer. The series’ creator, Helen Firth, and Starmer lived in Oxford and Leeds. In the late 1990s Starmer’s big McDonald’s litigation was making news, around the time Fielding wrote the first Bridget Jones novel.
In 2020, he said that he was happy to keep people guessing. “I had several different boyfriends, all very gorgeous,” she said. But she later told another interviewer that she’d never met Starmer.
Source: Who is Keir Starmer? A look at the man likely to become the next U.K. prime minister
The Post-Corbyn Labour Party and Keir Starmer: A Tale of Two Judges and Three Coins: The Trials of a Human Rights Lawyer
He worked as a human rights lawyer for about 20 years, and served as an adviser to police in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Peace Agreement, signed in 1998. But then he switched sides and became a prosecutor. For five years, he served as the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales.
Starmer’s switch from defense of people accused of being criminals to prosecution of them annoyed some of his human rights colleagues.
“He’d set himself up as railing against the state — a sort of self-consciously radical person. Baldwin said he gradually changed to where he could exert more influence. “He adopted a more authoritarian approach to crime.”
When riots broke out in London in 2011, Starmer revised the rules to fast-track prosecutions, arguing that speedier trials for offenders were a more effective deterrent to crime, than long prison sentences.
In 2014, Starmer received a knighthood for his criminal justice work, becoming Sir Keir. At his knighthood ceremony, Starmer — once caught on camera calling for the British monarchy to be abolished — knelt before Charles, then the prince of Wales, who tapped him on both shoulders with a sword.
When climate activists heckled Starmer during a speech this spring, Starmer made an off-the-cuff comment that revealed how he envisions a post-Corbyn Labour Party.
Harris spotted a person in Starmer who was willing to do what it takes to get elected. Namely, move the party toward the center, after the left-wing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who was often compared to Bernie Sanders.
Five years later, Starmer was chosen by his Labour colleagues to be their leader, succeeding Corbyn, who had been one of his mentors. But then he swiftly suspended Corbyn from the party, following accusations of antisemitism. As an independent, he was still in Parliament.
If elected, the Labour Party has promised to improve relations with Europe, tax private school tuition, ban the sale of gas and diesel cars by 2030 and restore competence to government.
There is a dilemma facing Keir Starmer. Expectations of big change are running very high. But his policy list is modest and cautious,” says David Willetts, a member of the Conservative Party who holds a seat in the House of Lords.
A Labour victory would say more about voters’ disgust with the governing Conservatives, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Boris Johnson looks really good after the other people. A lot of people want someone who can manage things sober and sensible.
The trick will be for Starmer to manage expectations. He inherits a country hobbled by years of Conservative-backed austerity measures, and government coffers are near empty.