Keir Starmer, UK PM | Simple, unadorned, pragmatic

Who is Keir Starmer, the new British Prime Minister?

He is said to be uncharismatic, too cautious, a little dull. Not a flamboyant politician. But he is perhaps exactly what the United Kingdom needed, after 14 years of tumultuous Conservative rule.

As expected, Keir Starmer, 61, will become Britain’s new prime minister – and the first Labour member to hold the post since 2010 – after a general election on Thursday that the Labour Party won by a landslide majority of more than 400 out of 650 seats.

This achievement was far from a given for this austere, grey-haired lawyer who came to politics late in life. Three years ago, he almost gave up after his party suffered a humiliating defeat in a by-election in Hartlepool. But his patience, his responsible image and his strategy of refocusing have paid off.

The son of a toolmaker and a nurse, both socialist activists, and named Keir after Labour’s first chairman, Keir Hardie, Starmer grew up in a small house in the London area.

Rather modest origins that he did not hesitate to put forward during the campaign, in order to break the image of a typical representative of the London elite that his conservative opponents tried to attach to him.

“There were tough times,” he said in a speech, speaking about his youth. “I know how it feels when inflation is out of control, how the rising cost of living can make you fear the postman coming: Will he bring more bills that you can’t afford to pay?”

Brilliant in his studies, he was the first of his four siblings to attend college, before studying law at the universities of Leeds and Oxford.

He went on to practice humanitarian law, defend trade unions, fight against McDonald’s, fight the death penalty in the Caribbean, and was appointed Attorney General for England and Wales, before entering politics at the age of 50.

Far from harming him, this atypical career path has helped to strengthen his credibility, believes Thibaud Harrois, lecturer in British civilization at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris. “It has allowed him to build the image of someone who knows something different,” he says. “Unlike many elected officials who have done that all their lives.”

The qualities of his defects

Keir Starmer certainly does not have the charisma of Tony Blair, former Labour Prime Minister (1997-2010) to whom he is often compared… unfavorably. His detractors castigate a personality that lacks brilliance, that is almost “drabe”.

He is also criticized for his difficulty in drawing a clear vision for the future of the country, as well as for an overly cautious campaign, during which he avoided getting involved, even though his victory was almost certain.

Some say he inherited Downing Street on a protest vote, with his victory being due instead to the defeat of a disbanded Conservative Party.

This would be forgetting that since his arrival at the head of Labour in 2020, Keir Starmer has worked miracles to bring the party back into the game, managing to refocus it after the very (too?) left-wing years of Jeremy Corbyn and striving to eradicate the anti-Semitism that his predecessor is accused of having allowed to flourish in the Labour ranks.

This shift to the centre is criticized by the most militant, who see it as a distortion of the party. But Catherine Ellis, a history professor at Metropolitan University of Toronto, points out that the Labour Party has “always been torn” between these two tendencies. The historian suggests that Keir Starmer did what was necessary to make his party win. “People said the same thing about Tony Blair in the 1990s. He reformed Labour beyond recognition. But he won in 1997, by a landslide,” she says.

As for his personality without charisma, Thibaud Harrois sees it rather as an asset. “It’s the image he seeks to put forward,” he explains. “He shows that he is serious, that he is not trying to circumvent the law, to please at all costs, that he is responsible, that he is there to do the job. Let’s say that it makes a strong contrast with Boris Johnson.”

“He doesn’t talk nonsense,” adds Mark Wickham-Jones, professor of politics at the University of Bristol. “And although he’s on the left, he’s also very pragmatic, even non-ideological in some situations.”

Mr Wickham-Jones agrees that the man is not the most charismatic, which “could be a problem in the long term”. But he believes that weakness is also his strength, having notably served him in bringing down the flamboyant Johnson during “partygate”. “He can be a shrewd tactician,” he says.

Married with two children, the Arsenal football fan was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to justice – although he rarely uses the title “sir”.

He also learned the violin from Norman Cook, from the English group The Housemartins, better known as Fatboy Slim. Which is surprising, as he prepares to take the reins of the United Kingdom.

With Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and West France