The rich are unlikely to be spared significant growth under a Labor government – and the middle class will suffer later
If Sir Keir Starmer is to become PM minister next year, and don’t expect anyone around him to say that this is his destiny. They are more likely to accept that it happened almost by accident.
Sir Keir was never expected to become the next Labor Prime Minister. Instead, he was to be the man who transformed the party from the unelected rabble of the Jeremy Corbyn days into a political force that could be taken seriously as an opposition again.
The expected time frame for transformation was up to ten years, meaning Sir Keir would lead Labor to a dignified defeat in 2024, reduce the Tory majority and hand power to a younger leader such as Wes Streeting, who would be groomed and polished for Downing Street .
“He was to become our Neil Kinnock or our John Smith,” as one Labor spokesman put it. But then two things suddenly happened.
Boris Johnson, the man Labor expected to lead the country into the 2030s, has squandered the gift of his 80-seat majority, testing the patience of his MPs to the limit. And while everyone looked on in dismay at the collapse of the Conservative Party, Sir Keir quietly proved that he was a far more effective reformer than anyone could have predicted.
To the dismay of the Tories, he purged the Labor Party of Corbynites, anti-Semites and representatives of Momentum, initiating changes in the rules that practically blocked the far left.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer, pictured walking past a section of the Berlin Wall, will come under scrutiny like never before as we approach an election Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Corbyn himself, the man from whom Sir Keir took over, has been excluded from the party. At its annual conference in Liverpool this week, the Labor Party looked like a party hungry for power rather than the protest movement it was under Corbyn.
The Conservatives believe Sir Keir is the weak link in the Labor Party and that the only way to win next year is to pursue him mercilessly, exposing his indecision on policy and portraying him as weak and unprincipled. It is hoped that voters will have enough doubts about Sir Keir to decide to stick with Rishi Sunak.
Whether they are right about Sir Keir's weaknesses or not, as we approach the election, it is certainly true that the Labor leader will find himself under scrutiny that he has never faced before. His ability to withstand the searing heat of daily interrogations, televised debates and brutal work is likely to be crucial. He is the man who has given the Labor Party a huge lead in the polls, and he is also the only man who stands to lose it.
Tom Harris, a former Labor MP and shadow environment minister, said: “If he manages to bring Labor to power, it will be the biggest and fastest turnaround in the history of any political party. “In a very quiet and methodical way, he was as much of a revolutionary as Tony Blair was.”
As recently as May 2021, Labor suffered a disastrous result in local elections, losing eight councils to the Tories winning 13. and lost the Hartlepool by-election by a landslide to the Tories on the same day.
Sir Tony Blair attacked Sir Keir for lacking a “compelling economic message” and political commentators expressed doubts over whether Labor could ever regain power.
Former Labor MP Tom Harris: “Very quietly and methodically, he was as much a revolutionary as Tony Blair was » Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA
But by then Sir Keir had already begun putting his lawyer's brain to work on changes to the rules that would prevent a repeat of the Corbyn experiment, persuading more moderate unions to give up their veto power over the selection of parliamentary candidates and imposing approved shortlists on local associations. /p>
“My general opinion of him is that he is a man who is in a hurry,” Harris adds. “He has one chance to become prime minister, and that is why he has so ruthlessly rid the party of its internal opponents in such a short space of time.”
Sir Keir is 61 years old, which is not that old for a potential prime minister, but the more striking fact is that he did not become an MP until he was almost 53 years old. Having risen along the traditional path to parliament and government, Sir Keir left that path late to decide that he liked being involved in politics.
By then he was already one of the country's most distinguished lawyers, knighted for his work as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), a position he had risen from humble roots solely through his own efforts.
He has an inspiring story to tell, but strangely enough, he doesn't want to tell it. Instead of celebrating his social mobility, he downplays it, refusing to call himself “sir” and emphasizing the man he once was rather than the man he has become. Sir Keir rarely misses an opportunity to remind viewers that his father Rodney was a tool maker or that he grew up in a shingle semi, but the truth about his past is much more subtle.
At the time Keir was born, The second eldest of four children, Rodney Starmer worked as a production manager for a large tool manufacturing firm in Ashford, Kent. According to Lord Ashcroft's biography The Red Knight, after the family moved to Oxted in Surrey and bought their own house, he founded The Oxted Tool Company.
The way Sir Keir Starmer portrays his social mobility speaks volumes. Photo: Twitter
Sir Keir's descriptions of his father starting work early, coming home for tea and then returning to work until 10pm are certainly more appropriate for a man who runs his own business rather than working shifts at factory. Sir Keir described him on Desert Island Discs as a “difficult man” and said: “We weren't close.”
Having achieved an 11-plus, Keir entered Reigate Grammar School, which became fee-paying in the third year, although existing pupils could stay there for free. When he became DPP he did not include his Reigate training in his Who's Who entry. Could his omission be related to the fact that Reigate was only able to avoid becoming a comprehensive state because of rule changes introduced by Margaret Thatcher when she was Education Secretary?
Sir Keir's mother Josephine suffered from Still's disease, a form of arthritis that begins in childhood, and from his early teens he had to cope with her frequent hospital visits, forcing him to grow up quickly.
Teachers remember Sir Keir as a quiet boy who was not outstanding academically but worked hard at everything. He won a player of the year trophy in the sixth form for his performances in the school football team (he still plays twice a week), received a Duke of Edinburgh's gold award, became a prefect and played flute in the school orchestra (he also studied violin with classmate Norman Cook, now world famous as DJ Fatboy Slim).
His skills as a flautist were so developed that his parents sent him to London every Saturday morning for extra lessons at the Conservatoire. The only thing he wasn't good at was public speaking. He wrote in the school magazine that there were “no outstanding speakers” in his home, Linkfield.
Teachers remember Sir Keir as a quiet boy who was not outstanding academically but worked hard at everything. Photo: Twitter
Rodney and Josephine were strong Labor Party supporters who were happy to hang Labor Party posters in their windows on otherwise Conservative voting streets, and at the age of 16 Keir joined his local branch of the Young Socialists. When he won a place at the University of Leeds to study law (becoming the first member of his family to go to university), he joined the student workers' club at the freshers' fair.
It was a vibrant time, with far-left militant tendencies fighting for control of society, but Sir Keir was not a regular visitor, preferring to immerse himself in his studies and earn a first-class degree. This earned him a postgraduate place in the civil law course at Oxford University, where his contemporaries included Boris Johnson and David Miliband, who became his friends.
From there he went to the Middle Temple on a scholarship. to help pay for his Bar fees, he trained as a barrister and by age 39 had become a Queen's Counsel (he once joked about the irony of being made a Queen's Counsel when “I have often suggested the abolition of the monarchy”).
< p>From blue collar to Oxford, Inns of Court, DPP, knighthood and Parliament, Sir Keir became a member of the establishment. He even said that the day he received his knighthood was the proudest day of his parents' lives, so why is he so reluctant to advertise this fact?
“It's deeply rooted in a working-class upbringing or lower middle class, and that always kept his vision clear,” says one ally. “He's not a big seller himself and although he's very proud of his knighthood, I think he just sees himself as Keir rather than Sir Keir.”
However, there is perhaps a more prudent option. the reason for his reticence. “When Tony Blair tried to come to power, he tried to tell the middle class that Labor was just like them,” the same source said. “But we are talking to the working class who didn't vote Labor last time and telling them we are listening to them again, and Keir's humility is useful for that.”
Sir Keir Starmer has won a place at the University of Leeds to study law, becoming the first member of his family to go to university.
The lesson will be important at the election, where Sir Keir will have to convince voters they can live with the work tax. mode. The wealthier are unlikely to be spared a significant increase. He has already signaled his intention to target non-households and tax private school fees, although the benefit to the Treasury will be more symbolic than financially significant.
However, these gestures will help middle-class voters put up with any subsequent rate hikes that hit them – on the grounds that the rich got wet first. Meanwhile, by touting his working experience, Sir Keir is assuring Labor that he will not pick their pockets.
If its mission is to calm, then Tory's machine will do everything it can to create panic. As the election approaches, the Conservatives are likely to raise questions about Sir Keir's far-left views as a young man. At university, he joined the editorial board of Socialist Alternatives, writing articles advocating greater union control of the economy and questioning the capitalist model, while the magazine criticized Neil Kinnock for being too centrist.
In the early days of his career as a barrister, he also sat on the editorial committee of the Socialist Lawyer magazine, whose staff included Marina Wheeler, recently recruited as Sir Keir's whistleblower king, who had incidentally married and divorced Boris Johnson.
Two of his most controversial policies can be traced to these early years. As a human rights lawyer who worked for three years as a lawyer for the charity Liberty, he could always grow into a politician who would oppose the government's scheme to process Rwandan illegal migrants.
Marina Wheeler has recently been recruited as Sir Keir's whistleblower czar. Photo: Jay Williams
His insistence in his conference speech that he would “move forward” with net zero reflects a personal “green” agenda that dates back to his student days, when he attended summer camps for ” green socialists” before environmental issues became as fashionable as they are now.
Other policy areas appear less deeply entrenched. After all, Sir Keir served in Corbyn's shadow cabinet before eventually denouncing him, calling for a second Brexit referendum and then saying he wouldn't try to repeal it, saying he would abolish university tuition fees, and then he said that he wouldn’t – the list of “flip-flops” is long.
The Tories will use this at the next election as evidence that Sir Keir cannot be trusted, that he is dangerous because he will present himself as a centrist before revealing his true colors as a far-left creature.
Those with him works, they note that he spent his first two years as party leader pushing for rule changes that allowed him to destroy the far left, and only now has he had the respite to devote his full attention to political issues.
Sir Keir Starmer, already one of the country's most distinguished lawyers, was knighted for his work as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2014. Photo: Yui Mok/PA
“Some people try to say that he “that he doesn’t act,” said a friend, “but I would say that his late entry into full-time politics means that he is more open-minded than other MPs, and he thinks very carefully.” about the issues before making a decision, and not just following the party line that was in the past.
“He doesn't want to go into elections shackled by policies that we can't pass, simply because domestic politics make them difficult to change. That is why he changed his position on tuition fees.”
His late entry into politics was reflected in his late marriage. After living and buying houses with two longtime girlfriends – lawyer Angela O'Brien and lawyer Philippa Kaufmann – in 2005 he met another lawyer, Victoria Alexander, who is 11 years his junior.
He told Piers Morgan on his Life Stories program that the first time they spoke on the phone, he heard her ask a colleague: “Who the hell does he think he is?” Despite this inauspicious start, they married in 2007, when Sir Keir was 44, and have a 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter.
Lady Starmer is Jewish, and although Sir Keir is officially known to not believe in God, he and his wife are raising their children in Jewish traditions, including family dinners every Friday night, a fixture in his diary. .
Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria are raising their children in Jewish tradition, including family dinners every Friday night. Credit: Pennsylvania
For Sir Keir, ridding the Labor Party of antisemitism was a personal matter, as Harris learned when he spoke to him following his decision to leave the party over its treatment of Jews under Corbyn. “We talked about why I left, and I could tell he was sincere about it,” Harris says.
“I expected him to do what most politicians would do, and asked if I was going to return to the team.” , but he didn't, and I sensed a level of humility in that. He did not seek to benefit from this, and this is his merit.”
As a human rights lawyer who has spent his career working in government, Sir Keir was an unusual choice for the DPP position, but friends describe him as “ruthlessly pragmatic”, which has allowed him to put his personal views aside in his work and also helps explain why he is so easily concedes to political issues.
When his five-year tenure as DPP came to an end in 2013, Sir Keir returned to his old bar, but when later that year he accepted an invitation to chair the Labor Party task force for victims' rights, he telegraphed his intention to enter politics.
Sir Keir has “one chance to become prime minister,” says Tom Harris. Photo: AFP via Getty Images < p>His long-standing friendship with the Milibands also helped him secure the nomination for his local constituency, Holborn and St Pancras, a safe London seat where long-time MP Frank Dobson was retiring.
Sir Keir was selected as a candidate in December 2014 and entered Parliament the following year, although his mother, whose lifelong illness had led to a leg amputation several years earlier, sadly died a few weeks before he received place.
She and his father allegedly named their son after the first leader of the Labor Party, Keir Hardie, although Sir Keir claims he never asked them why they chose his name.
If the polls are to be believed, he could do better than his namesake once in Downing Street. If he does, he will be the last one to say that this is his destiny.
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