After polls indicated Labor won Ending 14 years of Conservative governments, Keir Starmer will become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a historic majority in Parliament. The politician took over the reins of the party four years ago and changed the party's direction, bringing it closer to more centrist positions.
Starmer entered politics late at the age of 52. He entered the British Parliament for the first time as part of the Labor Party after being elected to the London boroughs of Holborn and St Pancras in 2015.
The politician, now 61, succeeded Jeremy Corbyn, a defender of far-left ideology, as party leader in April 2020 after a severe Labor backlash in the 2019 general election. Starmer changed the course of the party, moving it away from Corbyn's more extreme theses and starting to rise in the polls for future elections.
The next UK government will face a series of challenges
Starmer's leadership against the Conservatives coincided with a tumultuous period in the UK, weathering the pandemic, leaving the EU, the economic shock of the Ukraine invasion and, in addition, the economic turmoil of Liz's 49-day tenure. Prime Minister in 2022.
His message to voters – not the scaremongering kind – was one of reassurance that a Labor government would bring about change. “A vote for Labor is a vote for stability – economically and politically,” Starmer said after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called an election on May 22.
Starmer was a staunch opponent of Britain's decision to leave the EU, although he now says a Labor government will not seek to reverse it.
A barrister who served as chief solicitor of England and Wales between 2008 and 2013, Starmer has been described by opponents as a “left-wing London lawyer”. He was knighted for leading the Crown Prosecution Service, and Conservative opponents like to use the title Sir Keir Starmer to portray him as elitist and unapproachable.
Yet the politician likes to emphasize his everyman credentials and humble roots — presumably in contrast to Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker who is married to a billionaire's daughter.
Vegetarian, competitive and football lover
The lawyer was the son of a toolmaker and a nurse who named him after Keir Hardy, the first leader of the Labor Party. One of four children, he was brought up in a small town outside London in a household with little money.
“Times are tough,” he said in a campaign launch speech. “I know how it feels when inflation is out of control, how you dread the cost-of-living postman coming your way: 'Is he going to bring another bill we can't pay?' He said. “We chose the phone bill because it was always easier to live without it if it was cut off.”
He was the first member of his family to go to college, studying law at Leeds and Oxford University, and practiced human rights law before being appointed solicitor general.
Keir Starmer is the first vegetarian British Prime Minister. A huge football fan, he played the game as an amateur, a midfielder and was an Arsenal fan. Born in the south of the city, in the London suburb of Southwark, he studied law at the University of Leeds and went on to train as a barrister at Oxford.
An all-rounder, Starmer has said he would beat former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson if the two met in a football match. In another interview, he was asked what his main fear was. And he replied: “Failure”.
“I hate losing, especially in football and politics. I play football every week, in the middle of the field, commanding. A lot of people say that participation is the most important thing. I don't have that opinion. What's important is winning,” he said.
He met his wife Victoria, with whom he has two children, and for work reasons, he also works as a lawyer. “We were working on a case together and I had the audacity to question some of the work I was doing. So her first comment about me was telling her friends, 'Who did I think I was,'” he explained in an interview.
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“Reader. Infuriatingly humble travel enthusiast. Extreme food scholar. Writer. Communicator.”
