The 61-year-old former human rights lawyer, Keir Starmer despite not having the same celebrity lifestyle as some of his predecessors was instrumental in the Labour Party’s amazing comeback.
Keir Starmer is now set to be the next prime minister of Britain after his Labour Party won a decisive win general election on Thursday.
“Across our country, people will be waking up to the news that a weight has been lifted, a burden finally removed from the shoulders of this nation,” a jubilant Mr. Starmer told supporters in central London in the early hours of Friday morning.
Using the analogy of a rising “sunlight of hope,” pale at first and getting stronger, he said the country had “an opportunity after 14 years to get its future back.”
Mr. Starmer is now the Man to replace the outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who was in office less than two years ago, he got in touch with Mr. Starmer to congratulate him.
The 61-year-old Mr. Starmer, a former human rights attorney, has spearheaded the Labour Party’s incredible comeback after it suffered its worst election loss since the 1930s a few years ago. By taking advantage of the shortcomings of three Conservative prime ministers, he has dragged the party into the political middle.
“He has been ferocious — some would say tediously — boring in his discipline,” Jill Rutter, a research fellow at the London research group U.K. in a Changing Europe, told The New York Times recently. “He’s not going to set hearts racing, but he does look relatively prime-ministerial.”
Mr. Starmer grew up in Surrey, outside of London, in a working-class, left-wing household. He didn’t have a close relationship with his father, and his mother, a nurse, was frequently admitted to the hospital due to a crippling sickness.
After studying law at Oxford and first at Leeds University, Mr. Starmer became the first person in his family to graduate from college.
He was named after Keir Hardie, a Scottish trade unionist who was Labour’s first leader. As a young lawyer, he represented protesters accused of libel by McDonald’s. He later rose to become Britain’s chief prosecutor and was awarded a knighthood.
Elected to Parliament in 2015, he succeeded the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2020 and began remaking the party. He dropped Mr. Corbyn’s proposal to nationalize Britain’s energy companies and promised not to raise taxes on working families. He committed to supporting Britain’s military, hoping to banish an anti-patriotic label that clung to Labour during the Corbyn era.
