“If you get him talking about football, you’ll never shut him up,” Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, tells me. It feels less like friendly advice, more like a high-stakes warning about how best to interview Keir Starmer, Arsenal fanatic, award-winning human rights barrister, and oh yes, possibly – even quite probably? – the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Too late. We’re in the “wellness room” (a small turquoise-walled space dominated by staffers and an elaborate table display of Yorkshire shortbread) at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds – known as “Jimmy’s” to locals – and Starmer, 61, is off-script and 15 minutes deep into a sports chat about the FA Cup and his beloved Gunners with Hamza Semakula, a young semi-pro footballer who had to crowdfund his own medical treatment after a potentially career-ending injury. The mood is cautiously buoyant. According to latest polls, Labour – declared unelectable after their 2019 defeat – are ahead of the Conservatives by a huge 24 points.
Once branded a political lightweight, Starmer’s on the cusp of leading Labour to its first election victory in almost two decades. The party already has a 28-point lead among young women, which one think tank attributes as a reaction to the financial insecurity of the last 13 years – a Tory permacrisis that has seen (deep breath) Brexit, Covid-19’s Partygate, five prime ministers, votes of no confidence in two of them, an economic crash, the Windrush scandal and the plummeting pound, to say nothing of a wilting lettuce that overtook Liz Truss in the popularity stakes. But Starmer’s critics have observed that he is curiously impenetrable as a politician, noting that half of voters don’t know what he stands for. And while the British public can forgive ordinariness in an MP who gets the potholes fixed, they want to feel something more like a personal affinity with their PM – a bit of sparkle, you might say. And I’m here to see if I can unearth it.
I’ve joined Starmer in Leeds – where, coincidentally, he read law at the university as an undergraduate – on a fact-finding tour that will inform this year’s pitch to the public, talking to doctors, nurses and patients in an attempt to crack the problem of the NHS’s fear-inducing waiting lists. At the time of writing, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has intimated a general election will be announced in the latter half of 2024, but, in reality, it could come at any time. “Polls are not for inhaling,” Starmer later tells me in those polished, ever-so-slightly adenoidal southern tones. “We must never, ever let up on our single-minded determination to win this election.”
But for now he’s off again, despatching Semakula with a strong hug before striding past a surgeon in scrubs, who does a visible double take, and heading to a loading bay to board a blacked-out people carrier. “The glamour, the glamour!” he jokes as communications director Steph Driver, head of domestic policy Muneera Lula, an unsmiling protection officer and me pile in after him. I can’t help but notice there’s not a hair out of place on the silver quiff that is so distinctive it has its own Instagram account: @ratingstarmershair. Seeing it up close, I doubt it would budge in a gale-force wind. His go-to tie – Labour rose red, of course – has been temporarily jettisoned in an attempt to dress down one of his signature navy suits (“They’re all Charles Tyrwhitt,” a staffer informs me). When not in leader mode, he’s partial to Adidas trainers and Stone Island polos, a sartorial choice that got him called “The New Hooligan in Town” from an approving fanblog.
It’s a week before Christmas and the Leeds campus, a handsome blend of Victorian architecture and squeakily modern extensions, is devoid of students, all home for the holidays or nursing hangovers in bed. Starmer spent the early ’80s here raving with his mates to new wave pop bands such as Aztec Camera and Orange Juice. You can tell: that age-defying hairdo is pure Edwyn Collins. (Any wild student tales he wants to share? “Plenty,” he promises, “but not that I’m going to disclose to you!”) From the front seat, he gives me a drive-by tour of his old stomping ground. “I trotted down here as an 18-year-old not knowing what was in store.”
Law did not run in the Starmer family – a teenage Keir started his degree never having met a lawyer, nor knowing the difference between a lawyer and a barrister. In fact, he was the first in his family to go to university, which was “a big deal”. His graduation ceremony was “the only time my dad had put a suit on”.
His father, Rod, was a factory worker who made tools for injection moulding plastic. He was also a devoted carer for his wife and Starmer’s mother, Jo, who had been diagnosed at 11 with an autoimmune disease and told that she might never walk nor have children (a prediction she would defy four times over with Starmer and his siblings). But she was ill for much of his life, and eventually ended up losing all mobility and speech in the last decade she was alive. “They were inseparable,” Starmer says emphatically of his parents. “Everything they did, they did together.” In truth, his father formed a protective ring that didn’t leave room for outsiders – an instinct compounded by a general inwardness, a symptom of Starmer Snr’s belief that people looked down on his job. It’s why Keir’s speeches repeatedly circle the notions of dignity and respect today – they’re what his dad sensed he was never afforded.
Starmer still looks to Jo as a model of resilience: “The courage of my mum really went deep with me.” It strikes me, I say, that it’s hard for someone to admit they’re struggling when a parent has set the bar that high. A pause: “I don’t think so,” he says. “My mum was extraordinary… I hold that in me because every time I think, ‘This is tough,’ I just think about my mum. If she could keep getting back up, no matter how many times she was knocked to the floor, then I can do what I need to do.” Then, in a quieter voice, he adds: “Towards the end of life, she was very ill, as you probably know. She died just days before I became an MP, which was hard – really hard.”
It was only in 2015 that Starmer made the leap into politics, becoming MP for Holborn and St Pancras at the age of 52. He had been living in his constituency for 20 years before he became its representative – trips to his local Sainsbury’s have increasingly become meet-and-greets. “One of the things that Keir is sometimes criticised for is coming to politics late,” says Streeting. “I think it’s his greatest strength. He has zero tolerance for a lot of the personality politics and the clown show that sometimes characterises Westminster.”
For Starmer’s swearing in, Rod had cooked up an elaborate scheme involving a hoist to drive Jo up in the family Volvo, but she passed away before the ceremony. “When she died, it just broke him,” Starmer says of his father, who died three years later. Not long after, in 2019, Labour crashed and burned in the polls, Jeremy Corbyn resigned and Starmer – four years into his political career – decided to launch his campaign for leadership. The rest, as they say, is history.
It’s a touching story, and one that involves more struggle than the often oiled path of privilege that many PMs have enjoyed. Once reluctant to get too personal, Starmer has shared its broad contours in various interviews. But still, there seems to be something not quite connecting with the public. If you read the op-eds, the general judgement is that you’re a respectable but dull technocrat, I say. Why would people think that? “I think a lot of it is just, er, because people write the same thing over and over again. I mean, I don’t know,” he says with a laugh, although there’s a top note of frustration. “People write all sorts of things about politicians. That’s mild by some standards. My own evidence is what happens when I’m out and about meeting people – that’s always a very positive experience. People want to come up, they want to talk. I think people feel that they can tell me things, that I’m open to what they have to say.”
And yet, it’s undeniable that there is something unplaceable about Starmer the politician. He grew up working class, although his hometown of Oxted in Surrey won’t do much to dispel suspicions that he overinflates that part of his CV. His full title is The Right Honourable Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, which, understandably, certain tabloids have dined out on. (For the record, it’s tradition for ex-directors of public prosecutions to be knighted for services to law.) He’s not part of the Oxford PPE political elite, but he did a post-grad law qualification there. Was it a big jump from Leeds to Oxford? “The thing that stuck most in my mind was being taught by the people who wrote the books,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is incredible.’”
Success came quickly after Starmer was called to the bar in 1987, with several high-profile cases, including the notorious McLibel case, in which McDonald’s spent millions futilely attempting to sue two climate activists. Starmer advised the pair pro bono, and did the same for death row prisoners across Africa and the Caribbean. “None of them had any money at all,” he emphasises. “Zero.” He found himself eye to eye with dead men walking – and more than a few women too. In Uganda, he saved more than 400 from execution, including a mother who had been convicted of the murder of her husband based on the testimony of her three-year-old toddler.
“People often say in politics, ‘Are you tough enough to make the tough decisions?’” he argues. “My answer to that is: ‘Look, if you’ve sat in a cell with someone and had to make the decision about their case which could result in them living or dying, then you’ve had to take some tough decisions.’”
All this won him his share of glittery plaudits, including human rights lawyer of the year and the prestigious Sydney Elland Goldsmith award for pro bono work. “He could have taken an easy life and done the most amazing work,” Patrick Stevens, who worked with Starmer while the latter was director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, speculates. “He would have gone to the very top and earnt an absolute fortune.”
And yet if you’re looking for the firebrand leftie lawyer, you probably won’t find one in Starmer now. After working in Northern Ireland to reform its police service between 2003 and 2007, he was dragged into the heart of the establishment with his appointment as DPP and head of the beleaguered CPS, currently facing accusations of dismally failing rape victims.
Like many women, I find it horrifying that rape has been effectively decriminalised thanks to prosecution numbers plummeting. “If we are privileged enough to come into power, we have got as one of our five missions: ensuring that our communities [and] individuals are safe, and within that, to halve violence against women and girls. No opposition and no government has committed to that before,” he says. “That reflects my deep determination that we will ensure we do all we can to massively reduce the pernicious crime of sexual violence and domestic violence.”
A few weeks later, Starmer arrives at The Bull & Last pub in northwest London, not far from the family home, ready for his Vogue photoshoot. “Welcome to my constituency,” he says, beaming, arms outstretched, as he walks through the door. His wife, Victoria, is already here and together they exit onto the street, ambling hand in hand past joggers and dog walkers to Parliament Hill, where they share some private words as the photographer captures them against the London skyline.
His meet cute with Vic, as he affectionately calls her, a former solicitor who now works in occupational health for the NHS, was on the phone. Starmer rung to grill her on the accuracy of some documents. Before he hung up, he overheard his now-wife’s closing remarks to her colleague: “Who the f**k does he think he is?”
“You might think, ‘Not the best of starts,’ but it was absolutely classic Vic,” he says, laughing. “Very sassy, very down to earth, no nonsense from anyone, including from me.”
“That’s very much Vic,” says Carolyn Harris, Labour MP and family friend, who spends a week in summer with the Starmers in South Wales every year. “Irreverent is the word I’d use. She is a litmus paper, literally the yin to his yang.” Of Starmer, she says how he’s “easy to be with. I would never introduce someone to Keir and think, ‘I hope he doesn’t sound too stuffy for them now.’ I would take him to a spit-and-sawdust pub much as I would to The Savoy. He’s up for a laugh and easily amused. Give him what he loves, which is football and his family, and he’s happy.”
The couple married in 2007 and have two teenage children. It helps that normality remains at home. Stamer is a pescetarian and a keen cook. Who handles the housework? “We share it, I’d say,” Starmer replies, then amends dutifully: “Vic would say she does the majority of it.” When it comes to childcare, they had “the usual juggling as a family, particularly when our kids were very young”, says Starmer. “This is a massive issue for many families. Childcare is very expensive.” He adds that a Labour government will “ensure that childcare gets better”, including a pledge – first announced in 2022 – to introduce “breakfast clubs, where children can be dropped off very early in the morning, which allows both parents to go to work”. And, he promises, “We need to build on that because it is a daily struggle for far too many families, and it’s an inhibitor of parents getting back into the workforce, particularly women.”
When his son was born, he recalls, “Somebody dropped us a note through the door that said: ‘And in that moment, everything changed.’ That sums up what [parenting] has been like. It’s fantastic. It gives me real pride and joy. I love spending time with them.” That includes Friday night dinners in with the kids – those evenings are off limits for work – and dropping his teenage son off at kickboxing. “I wouldn’t, he’s really good!” he demurs when asked if he’d ever get in the ring with him. Starmer smiles mistily: “They rib me relentlessly [and] laugh at me, which is great. The moment I walk in the door, I’m Dad, and that’s it. The rest has to be left at the door.”
When we meet, it’s almost four years to the day that Starmer threw his hat into the ring for leader. At the time, the Conservatives were racing 17 points ahead. “Few of us, myself included, would have believed back in 2020 when he became leader that Labour would be in a position where it could win a general election,” Streeting tells me in Leeds. “It wouldn’t have happened without him.”
Starmer – who always prefers using “we” when it comes to the Labour Party – sums it up: “We’ve changed our party from a party of division, a party with the stain of anti-Semitism running through it, to a party that is in a position to serve the country. Now we want the opportunity to change the country for the better in the same way that we changed our party for the better.” Whenever the general election is announced, he declares, Labour stands ready “with a very firm message to people that if they want change, this is the opportunity for them to vote for it.”
It’s a stunning electoral turnaround, one sometimes compared to the revival of Starmer’s beloved Arsenal. It hasn’t come, however, without drama – not least unceremoniously booting out Corbyn from the party following that anti-Semitism row. Does Starmer consider himself ruthless? “I’m very clear about what I’m trying to achieve, and I will let nothing get in the way.”
We’re talking, of course, about Labour victory – Starmer hasn’t relaxed those steely blue eyes from the prize: “We have to fight like we’re five points behind, I say this to the shadow cabinet every week.” Despite the mounting fortunes of his party, Starmer has taken heat from progressives and the traditional left alike on issues including trans rights, immigration and the Gaza crisis. On these, critics say, he’s hewed too far to the right. When, in Leeds, my Uber pulled up outside the faculty building that served as our interview location, I arrived in time to spot four activists unfurl a Palestine flag and start chanting: “Keir Starmer, shame on you!” I am told he was spirited out the back.
When I reach Starmer on the phone several days later, he’s in the departure lounge of Tallinn Airport, fresh from a visit to British troops on the border between Estonia and Russia. How does it feel to face a chorus of voices saying that he has misjudged the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, after he has spent much of his career getting people off death row, for example? “Shouting is easy – solving difficult problems is much more difficult,” he says. “We all want a ceasefire. We all want the hostilities to end. We all want to get the hostages released. That will end with serious politics and the sort of discussions I’ve been having with the political leaders who, in the end, will bring this about.”
Sounds like it’s time for me to lay my cards on the table and try to ruffle that soignée hairdo. I’m queer and an immigrant, I tell him. I should be cheering on a renewed Labour, and yet I find myself struck by the distance between Starmer the person and his policies. What can he say to reassure someone like me? That sets him off on another verbal sprint: “The feature of the last 14 years has been this constant attempt in politics to find the differences between people rather than finding the common point. We will go forward with our agenda for equality, strengthen those equality rights, and ensure that you and everybody else feels not just part of it, but absolutely confident and – I suppose the keyword – secure.” Neither answer leaves me feeling particularly reassured. Then again, they’re classic Keir: professional, lawyerly and relentlessly on-message, often betraying nothing of the genuinely interesting human beneath.
Politicians are, of course, masters of the art of talking a lot but not saying much (see: previous Number 10 occupant Boris Johnson). Perhaps it boils down to this: does Keir Starmer care about ordinary people? I expect the protesters in Leeds would say no, and so would diehard Corbynistas. Then I remember Hamza Semakula, a regular guy who plays for Hendon FC and looked more than a little overwhelmed to be that day’s grist for the Labour PR mill.
By the end of his chat with Starmer, Semakula was smiling and promising him a season ticket. Of course, it was only a moment. But given dignity and respect is what Starmer keeps talking about, maybe it matters that he made Semakula feel more safe and comfortable; that his views mattered. Perhaps, these days, that’s all we can ask of our politicians. As Starmer puts it himself: “I’m a great believer in listening.”
