Who is Labour’s Keir Starmer, the potential new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

The 61-year-old lawyer could be appointed prime minister after the UK general election on Thursday, with polls showing Labour as the winner.

A historic page is turning in the United Kingdom on Thursday: Labour is expected to inflict a crushing defeat on the Conservatives, who have been in power for 14 years, in general elections marked by the recent surge of the hard right, on Thursday July 4, if the polls are to be believed.

After the years of Brexit, Covid, scandals and political instability – the country has had three Conservative Prime Ministers in 2022 and five since 2010 – voters seem to want change. They are thus ready to give a chance to Keir Starmer, an austere and little-known 61-year-old Labour, a former human rights lawyer and then attorney general, before being elected MP only nine years ago… Even if his stature as a leader still raises questions.

Yet in his four years at the helm, he has changed the Labour Party: refocused its policies and excluded members of the old leadership, accused of anti-Semitism. In particular, Jeremy Corbyn, his predecessor, who was much further to the left than he was. Keir Starmer has not made many friends.

Shelley Guest, a local Labour MP near Manchester, is campaigning for her party to win. But when it comes to talking about her leader, her enthusiasm fades: “You can’t always agree with the person who is in charge. But you have to focus on what is being implemented and I think we have the right person to make things happen.“, she says. Before taking a more mocking tone off the microphone: Shelley Guest nicknames Keir Starmer “Mr Personality”, to point out his lack of charisma.

The latter in fact took the reins of his party when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, which is anything but a coincidence, explains political scientist Anand Menon: “Keir Starmer is the opposite of Boris Johnson. He was even chosen by his party with this idea. On one side the buffoon, the clown and on the other, the serious, cerebral, reasonable lawyer who leads a boring campaign without an exciting vision for the future.”

On the political side, the Labour programme announces a recovery of public health services, more housing, security, ecology, less illegal immigration… without giving many details. Cautious, Keir Starmer has so far let himself be carried along by the anti-Conservative wave.