UK to get new PM: Who is Keir Starmer?

Incoming British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, son of a hard-working toolmaker father and a mother who worked for the National Health Service (NHS), was first elected to parliament in 2015 and took charge of the Labour Party in 2020, soon after its worst election rout in 85 years.

Since then, Starmer, 61, has worked hard on making the Labour a fighting machine, moving against those he felt ought to be disciplined and slowly guiding the party from the clutches of hardcore Leftists.

All credit will go to Starmer for leading, in an unobtrusive way, the Labour to a landslide win after 14 uninterrupted years of Conservative majority, just four years after he came to head the party.

What really helped him was a groundswell against the Tories, whose unending infighting led to a serious erosion of voter support though it has managed to finish as the main opposition party.

Early life struggle 

Starmer grew up in a small town in Surrey, just outside London. In election speeches, he would often speak about how his father, Rodney, became insular due to the economic hardships he underwent.

His mother Josephine suffered for all her life from Still's disease, a type of inflammatory arthritis, and died only a few weeks after he was first elected to parliament in 2015. His father died three years later.

He believes he has inherited the grit and determination of his mother and the strong work ethic of his father, whose manual labour drives much of Starmer’s vision to ensure respect for those who work hard.

"I carry the disrespect my dad felt because he worked in a factory, that really impacted him, that made him recoil from company and become quite isolated,” he told The Sunday Times. “It is among the reasons that I will never treat people with disrespect.”

Lack of charisma?

Starmer often faced criticism for a perceived lack of charisma but he made it a mission to capitalise on long years of economic pain and political chaos under the Conservative Party. As of now, the economy is so bad that a record number of British children live in poverty.

A former lawyer, Starmer was knighted for services to criminal justice. He was the first member of his family to go to university, after which he helped run a Left-wing magazine, Socialist Alternatives.

As a lawyer, he rose to become the head of public prosecutions in 2008, running the British government's Crown Prosecution Service. He received his knighthood in 2014.

As Labour leader, Starmer tried to make his party more electable by forcing out individuals seen as entrenched in its socialist left wing. These are the people who ran the party under its previous leader Jeremy Corbyn. Later, Starmer suspended Corbyn from the party.

Election campaign

Starmer’s public mantra has always been: Country before party.

“If you want change, you have to vote for it.” This was Starmer’s central message of his election campaign.

Even after all opinion polls forecast a supermajority on the scale of 1997, his election strategy was characterised by caution.

Long way ahead

"If we get the opportunity, we will govern as we have changed Labour, which is to take the country from the pretty poor place that it’s in at the moment and to seriously change it, so that by the end of the first term of a Labour government people will be able to say, ‘do you know what, I am better off’,” he declared.

The Left within the Labour party has not been happy with Starmer’s backtracking on key pledges including that Labour would increase income tax, scrap university tuition fees and nationalize the majority of Britain's public services.

He has also come under attack for Labour's U-turn on a green investment pledge worth $35 billion annually, and for taking a middle road on Israel’s war on Gaza.

'Big, bold plan'

In a recent speech, Starmer said he had a long-term "big, bold plan" for Britain. But he warned that "we need first steps."

Labour leaders say these would include clamping down on tax avoidance, shortening NHS patient waiting lists and recruiting more teachers and neighbourhood police officers.

He also wants to negotiate a better deal with the European Union, given the terrible economic consequences of the United Kingdom's "Brexit".

"I'm not going to make a promise before the election that I'm not comfortable we can actually deliver," he has stressed.

Starmer has spoken admiringly of President Joe Biden, particularly his focus on job creation and investment in domestic industry. But he has said he will work with whoever is elected president in the US.