Keir Starmer
| Keir Starmer | |
|---|---|
|
| |
| Name | Keir Rodney Starmer (born 2 September, 1962) |
| Nicknames | ? |
| Politics | |
| Party | Labour |
| Constituency | Holborn and St Pancras (2015-present) |
| Positions | • Leader of the Opposition (2020-present) • Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (2016-2020) • Shadow Minister of State for Immigration (2015-2020) |
| Likes | Donkeys |
| Dislikes | Brexit |
| Friends | ? |
| Enemies | Corbynistas |
| Relationships | |
| Partners | Victoria Alexander (?-present, married in 2007) |
| Children | Son (2009), Daughter (2011) |
| Personal Attributes | |
| Nationality | English |
| Religion | ? |
| Sexuality | Straight |
| Height | 5 ft 9 |
| Eye Colour | Green |
| Handedness | Right |
| Accent | ? |
| Languages | You can delete this line if they only know English |
Sub Dom hankers for Daddy as Keir kills him with kindness. (This was all well above Dom’s pay grade. He shouldn’t be carrying the can for all this.) ~ John Crace for the Guardian, on Rabb's drubbing by Starmer in April 2020's PMQs
Former Director of Public Prosecutions, now leader of the Labour Party.
Life and Career[edit | edit source]
A working-class boy with a first class in Law from the University of Leeds, Starmer earned his peerage prosecuting criminals and terrorists for Her Majesty’s Government as Director of Public Prosecutions. He entered politics relatively recently in 2015. After Jeremy Corbyn’s drubbing by Boris Johnson in the UK General Elections of 2019, Starmer took over the helm of the Labour Party.
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Keir Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962. He was the second of four children of Josephine (née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker. Keir was named after the first Labour Party MP, Keir Hardie. He attended Reigate Grammar School, then a voluntary aided state school, although it converted to an independent fee-paying grammar school in 1976. He studied law at the University of Leeds, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree in 1985. He then undertook postgraduate studies at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating from the University of Oxford as a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) in 1986.
Starmer joined the East Surrey Young Socialists when he was a teenager. “We were lively, we had all the answers, we knew everything as teenagers, and we let everybody know it,” he told the BBC. At college he helped set up a pamphlet named Socialist Alternatives, which strove to change the basis of the economy to socialist ends. In one interview, with left-wing Labour grandee Tony Benn, he said Labour should become “the united party of the oppressed.”
Pre-political Career[edit | edit source]
Starmer was called to the Bar in 1987, at the Middle Temple, later becoming a bencher there in 2009. He has also been called to the bar in several Caribbean countries.
He made his name as a human rights barrister, notably working for Helen Steel and David Morris, a pair of environmentalists who were sued by McDonald’s over a factsheet critical of the company in what became known as the McLibel case, which went to court in 1997. The original case lasted nearly ten years, which, according to the BBC, made it the longest-running libel case in English history. Starmer’s clients lost at first instance, but 2005 they won a landmark appeal in the European Court of Human Rights against the British government, on the basis that they had been denied a fair trial because of the lack of legal aid.
Here he is being interviewed for McLibel, the documentary about the case:
He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2002, the same year he became joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. Starmer also served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and was also a member of the Foreign Office Death Penalty Advisory Panel from 2002 to 2008.
In 2005 he won the Bar Council’s pro bono award for his contributions to challenging the death penalty in the Caribbean and Africa. In 2007, he was named "QC of the Year" by the UK legal directory.
As Director of Public Prosecutions In July 2008, Attorney General Patricia Scotland named Starmer as the new Head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions; he took over from Ken Macdonald on 1 November 2008. Macdonald, himself a former defence lawyer, publicly welcomed the appointment.
Early Political Career[edit | edit source]
In 2013, Starmer was recruited by Ed Miliband to review the party’s justice policies. Endorsed by Neil Kinnock and, tacitly at least, by Miliband, Starmer was selected in December 2014 to be the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, following the decision of the sitting MP Frank Dobson to retire. Starmer was elected at the 2015 general election with a majority of 17,048.
Parliamentary Career[edit | edit source]
In 2015, when Starmer was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras, he was also appointed Shadow Minister of State for Immigration, a role from which Starmer resigned in 2016 in protest at Corbyn's leadership, along with numerous other Labour MPs.
In the 2014 New Year Honours he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and was sworn in as a Privy Councillor in 2017.
2015 Leadership Contest[edit | edit source]
As soon as Chuka Umunna announced he was not longer standing for the Labour leadership, the newly elected Keir began trending as a possible replacement candidate. Despite being "flattered" by the idea, Keir Starmer stated that he believed that someone with "more political experience" would be better suited to the role.[1]
No shit, Keir.
2020 Leadership Contest[edit | edit source]
Following Labour's resounding defeat in the 2019 general election, Jeremy Corbyn announced that he would stand down as Leader of the Labour Party. Starmer announced his candidacy in the ensuing leadership election on 4 January 2020, winning multiple endorsements from MPs as well as from the trade union Unison. He went on to win the leadership contest on 4 April 2020, beating rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, with 56.2% of the vote in the first round. As a consequence, he also became Leader of the Opposition.
| Full List of Appointments |
|---|
| • Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras (7 May, 2015 - present) |
| • Shadow Minister of State for Immigration (14 September, 2015 - 27 June, 2016) |
| • Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (6 October, 2016 - 4 April, 2020) |
| • Leader of the Labour Party (4 April, 2020 - present) |
| • Leader of the Opposition (4 April, 2020 - present) |
| Greatest Moments | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Summary | Video | Transcript |
| Date of video | A summary | Where can people find a transcript? If it's short- "He died, Jeremy, he tragically died."- just type it out. Otherwise link to Hansard or an interview transcript. | |
Personal Life[edit | edit source]
It's quite tough to get a donkey to do something it doesn’t want to. Once you've worked with donkeys, Labour MPs are a breeze.~ Keir Starmer, in an interview in The Times[2]
Starmer is extremely private about his personal life, to the extent that his children have not been named publicly. His wife Victoria is a solicitor, and is of Jewish parentage (her father is a Polish émigré).
Starmer is a keen footballer, having played for Homerton Academicals, a north London amateur team, and supports Premier League side Arsenal. He is a vegetarian, believing that "it's better for yourself and for the environment".
Starmer's parents were very fond of donkeys, running a small sanctuary for threatened animals in a seven-acre field, which he bought for them in 1996, behind their home near Oxted. Keir reckons his experience working with the donkeys has served him well in public life.
Appearance[edit | edit source]
He wore pink unicorn face glitter for London Pride 2019:
Portrayal[edit | edit source]
In the Media[edit | edit source]
In the 2020 leadership race, Gordon Brown endorsed Starmer's candidacy, saying he had the “necessary qualifications” for a future prime minister.
Starmer's critics say he’s a throwback to the dark days of New Labour; even more unforgivably, he's been called boring by Good Morning Britain. But he’s shown himself unafraid to tackle tough issues and make tough decisions, and shown himself to be the grown-up the deeply divided Labour Party needs. (Or failing that, to deliver a proper domming to the Conservatives, who might do well to beware Daddy Starmer.)
In May 2020, he was lambasted by the right for owning land reportedly worth £10 million. Further investigation revealed this to be the rescue donkey sanctuary which he had bought for his disabled mother in 1996, whereupon the Donkeygate smear campaign, such as it was, backfired, one columnist remarking, "It's better a field of donkeys than a cabinet of asses."
In Culture[edit | edit source]
He was, allegedly, the inspiration for Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones' Diary[3]
In Fanon[edit | edit source]
It's still too early to predict how lolitics would like to portray him, even though the Guardian thinks he'd make a good dom Daddy.
Shipping[edit | edit source]
It's never too early to start shipping it. Ed Miliband - - who recruited him into the Labour Party in 2013, and whom Starmer rescued in April 2020 from the ignominy of being a podcast co-host ("Reasons to be Cheerful", with radio presenter Geoff Lloyd), and brought back to frontline politics as Labour’s shadow business, energy and industry secretary - - would be favourite.
