Keir Starmer

Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020.

Keir Rodney Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962.

He grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey.

He was the second of the four children of Josephine (Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, who was a toolmaker.

His mother had Still's disease.

His parents were Labour Party supporters, and named him after the party's first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie.

He passed the 11-plus examination and gained entry to Reigate Grammar School, then a voluntary aided selective grammar school.

The school was converted into an independent fee-paying school in 1976, while he was a student.

Although he was exempt from paying fees until the age of 16, his sixth-form study fees were paid by a bursary he received from the private school's charity.

Among his classmates were the musician Norman Cook, alongside whom Starmer took violin lessons; Andrew Cooper, who went on to become a Conservative peer; and future conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan.

According to Starmer, he and Sullivan "fought over everything ... Politics, religion. You name it."

In his teenage years, Starmer was active in Labour politics; he was a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists in East Surrey.

He was a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama until the age of 18, and played the flute, piano, recorder and violin.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Leeds in 1985 and gained a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree at St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford in 1986.

After being called to the bar, Starmer practised predominantly in criminal defence work, specialising in human rights matters.

Starmer studied law at the University of Leeds, graduating with first class honours and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree in 1985, becoming the first member of his family to graduate.

He undertook postgraduate studies at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating from the University of Oxford as a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) in 1986.

From 1986 to 1987, Keir Starmer served as the editor of Socialist Alternatives, a Trotskyist radical magazine.

The magazine was produced by an organization under the same name, which represented the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT).

Starmer became a barrister in 1987 at the Middle Temple, becoming a bencher there in 2009.

Becoming a member of Doughty Street Chambers in 1990, he was appointed as Queen's Counsel (QC) in 2002.

He served as a legal officer for the campaign group Liberty until 1990.

He was a member of Doughty Street Chambers from 1990 onwards, primarily working on human rights issues.

He has been called to the bar in several Caribbean countries, where he has defended convicts sentenced to the death penalty.

He assisted Helen Steel and David Morris in the McLibel case, in the trial and appeal in English courts, also represented them at the European court.

The case was seen as a David and Goliath case; a large team of leading lawyers represented McDonald's and the legal bills were estimated at £10m.

By contrast Steel and Morris were denied legal aid; they acted on their own with help from lawyers including Starmer.

He was previously Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.

Starmer was born in London and raised in Surrey, where he attended the selective state Reigate Grammar School, which became a private school while he was a student.

In 2008, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, holding these positions until 2013.

On conclusion of his five-year term as DPP, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2014 New Year Honours.

He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015.

Elected to the House of Commons at the 2015 general election, Starmer was appointed Shadow Minister for Immigration by new party leader Jeremy Corbyn in September 2015.

He resigned in 2016 as part of the wider June 2016 British shadow cabinet resignations in protest at Corbyn's leadership, but accepted a new post under Corbyn later that year as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union following the EU membership referendum.

Starmer advocated a second referendum on Brexit, in which he stated he would vote to "remain"; this policy was ultimately included in the 2019 Labour election platform.

After Corbyn resigned following Labour's 2019 general election defeat, Starmer won the party's 2020 leadership election.

His leadership has been characterised by movement towards the political centre and abandonment of much of the left-wing platform of his leadership campaign, as well as by opposition to some of the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic and issues such as Partygate, the September 2022 mini-budget, and the cost of living crisis.

Starmer has emphasised the importance of eliminating antisemitism in the Labour Party.

In 2023, he set out five missions for a Labour government, targeting issues such as economic growth, health, clean energy, crime, and education.

Since late 2021, the party has maintained leads in opinion polling over the governing Conservative Party, often by wide margins.