In the UK general election, Keir Starmer allowed himself to reflect for a moment on how far he had come since his becoming Leader of the Labour Party four and half years ago. Then, it was in shock of one of its worst defeat ever in 100 years.
“The optimists said: it will take ten years to fix this party and get it back,” he said to the press before a final rally in East Midlands. “The pessimists said you are never going to fix this party, it is never going to be in government again.” adding “here we are.”
He has led the Labour party to victory now, on course for Parliament’s largest majority since Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide at least 1997.
The UK’s presumptive prime minister has far outperformed his chances as hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s successor this year. Dull, uninteresting, “no Tony Blair” as focus groups often describe him; this newbie politician has been partly lucky.
Boris Johnson’s “partygate” scandal and Liz Truss’s “mini-budget” that made the pound tank came after several years of conservative austerity which entailed deep cuts into many public services. All together have contributed towards what has just happened in British general elections. However, Starmer too had his part to play revealing a quiet ruthlessness while changing his party purges from Corbynites even expelling Corbyn himself bringing about its positioning for winning and governing again.
“It feels good, I must admit,” Starmer told London-based supporters at the point when the party crossed HOC threshold that is critical of 326 seats before noting that “a mandate like this comes with a great responsibility.”
Now they will have to see if those same skills which got him into number ten will help him resolve an almost insurmountable list of problems. Britons are reeling under the impact of Brexit, pandemic and a historic squeeze on living standards. His government faces a more dangerous world and has little money to spend on improving the situation at home without raising broad-based taxes, something he’s said he doesn’t want to do.
The UK’s newest PM, who became “Sir Keir” when he was knighted for his legal career before entering politics, started from very humble beginnings that he has been at pains to remind voters of throughout this election.
He grew up, as he often recounts, in a “pebble-dashed” semi-detached house in Oxted, a London commuter town set in Surrey countryside. With his father being a tool maker and his mother suffering from autoimmune disease that made her quit nursing job while Stamer was still a child made him one out of the four children.
His father raised his four kids alone, and he was also the sole caretaker of his sick wife. “I recall when our phone got disconnect because we didn’t pay for the bills”, Starmer tells us during the campaign, “It was difficult to make ends meet”.
Starmer grew up in Reigate Grammar, where he went to a public school for free thanks to excellent exam marks which made him the first in his family to go to university; for law studies at Leeds University with honors before proceeding on a BCL at Oxford, an exclusive one-year postgraduate course in law.
A young man in London during the late eighties, he lived in what he called a ‘party flat’ that sometimes had vomit in the bath tub as friends kept coming after midnight and writing leftward-looking radical tracts for minority journals; however by day he ascended higher ranks until he became a reputable human rights advocate.
However Starmer denies being the basis for Mark Darcy, the dashing barrister defending civil liberties and Bridget Jones love interest, according to him. What was most notable though is how this work conducted pro bono including representation of people from Caribbean against capital punishment.
He rose to national prominence when representing two activists – Helen Steel, a gardener and David Morris now a former mailman who were accuse by McDonalds of libel over flyers that criticized their fast food empire during their famous McLibel trial. Queen’s Counsel appointed him three months ahead of his 40th birthday on 2002.
The following year however changed everything as becoming Human Rights Advisor for Policing Board (Northern Ireland) made him rethink even more about what effecting change meant. The new police service created under 1998 peace settlement could only be establish if it acquired trust from all communities.
Before this post Starmer had seen himself as an outsider who challenged authority every way possible but never entered any system for changes. This was his first time he work inside an organization to bring about change. He found it more productive.
That was followed by the most senior position he ever held, as director of public prosecutions from 2008 until 2013. It meant that Starmer had overall responsibility for criminal justice in the country but also for a major institution containing thousands of employees and lawyers while the UK was going through deep and painful budget cuts. Under his leadership, it effectively prosecuted leading media figures for hacking mobile phones and politicians for fraud with their claims.
It was hardly a surprise that Britain’s former top prosecutor entered politics. After leaving the DPP, Starmer stood in the safe Labour seat of Holborn and St Pancras at the May 2015 general election, expecting to be appoint attorney general in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet. Instead he went into opposition straight away having been electe to a Labour parliamentary party ripped apart by a shocking defeat.
During the Corbyn era, Starmer, a remainer, ascended up the highest ladder of shadow ministerial ranks to be the shadow Brexit secretary. Colleagues like Rachel Reeves refused to serve under Corbyn or resigned from the party altogether over anti-Semitism but Starmer stayed.
However, by March 2018, fed up with antisemitism and foreign policies under Corbyn’s leadership, Starmer and his group knew that he would run for party leadership in some future time. Almost two years later they met secretly every Monday morning to ensure that he would be ready when the time came.
This was in 2020. He ran and won a leadership campaign with ten pledges for Labour members which essentially meant retaining radical spirit of the Corbynite agenda as it seeks to renationalize rail, mail, energy and water among others. And he famously declared “my friend Jeremy Corbyn.”
Since taking charge as leader, Starmer has thrown out Corbyn from his party; he has also introduced compulsory anti-Semitism training and rigorously vetted contenders who will obey him partially or wholly. With Rachael Reeves his shadow chancellor amongst other close associates from within their party’s right wing they have been able to impose strict fiscal discipline abandoning most of his original campaign promises while embracing union Jack flagging while speaking language security discipline patriotism.
Not all things have worked as planned. After losing Hartlepool by-election where an erstwhile safe seat fell to Johnson’s conservatives at the beginning of 2020 he thought about stepping down. To this effect he fired some advisers appointed new ones and toughened his resolve to turn around his party.
More recently is Starmer in protracted public disagreement among top team members about whether or not it should ditch its pledge of spending £28 billion ($36 billion) annually on green infrastructure resulted into abrupt change in stance by him followed by a very heated debate on LBC radio leading to loss of votes due to controversial statements made by him in October that Israel had the right to stop power and water supply to Gaza-strip.
The people around him have bee described as a ‘boy’s club’ who have removed all signs of Corbynism from the party as well as an attitude towards the party’s elected representatives.
While his critics point out that he is nothing like the man who ran for leader four and a half years ago, Starmer takes pride in this. He says “I changed my party”. “Now I want to change the country.”
