'I will never be friends with Sunak,' says Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer said he and Rishi Sunak were from “different worlds”. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images Europe

Sir Keir Starmer said he would never be “friends” with Rishi Sunak because they are from “completely different worlds”.

Sir Keir, leader of the Labor Party , said that although he got on “good” with the Prime Minister, he would not have been friends with him if circumstances had been different.

He made these comments while allowing cameras to follow him around the country for an ITV documentary, including inside Parliament before the King's speech and at a café in his north London constituency.

When it was suggested that there might be some similarities between him and Mr Sunak and that under different circumstances they could become friends, Sir Keir said: “We wouldn't be friends – we come from completely different worlds.”

He also spoke about his student life at Leeds University in the 1980s, when he wrote about the “authoritarian onslaught of Thatcherism” in the journal Socialist Alternatives.

The Labor Party leader faced a backlash from supporters for praising Thatcher, writing for The Telegraph that she was “trying to lift Britain out of its stupor by unleashing our natural entrepreneurial spirit.”

Speaking about his criticism in words in Socialist Alternatives, he told ITV: “Even now I would say the same thing. She had clarity of mission and purpose. But in fact, what she did was very destructive.”

Sir Keir, who was elected MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015, became shadow immigration minister under Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labor leader. He resigned in protest at Corbyn's leadership in June 2016 and then returned to become shadow Brexit secretary.

Asked if he ever wanted Corbyn to become prime minister, he replied: “I don't think the Labor Party was in a position to win the last election, I obviously didn't vote for Corbyn in 2015 or 2016. On the contrary, I resigned in 2016.

“I thought that once the Brexit referendum in 2016 happened, I was of the opinion that what followed over the next few years would be felt for generations, and that I felt it was my responsibility to play my full part in it.”

Sir Keir often spoke of his working-class upbringing, with his father a toolmaker and his mother a nurse. He attended a state school before going to Leeds University.

Mr Sunak's parents worked as a GP and pharmacist. He studied at Winchester College and then went to Lincoln College, Oxford.