I’ve just finished reading Tom Baldwin’s Keir Starmer, The Biography.  The author insists that it’s not ‘authorised’; but it could well be, relying as it does on sources very close to Starmer, including the man himself, and being overall pretty positive and complimentary. It could almost be an autobiography, painting Starmer as he would like to appear. Readers can probably assume, therefore, that the Keir Starmer described here is roughly what we’ll get when he enters No. 10 Downing Street later this year, as is almost universally predicted. Unless, of course, there’s a demon lurking behind the eyes, as Tory propagandists liked to make out there was behind Blair’s.

He does appear rather dull and ‘lawyerly’, certainly by contrast with one or two of the prime ministers who will have preceded him, a fact he acknowledges. But his – and Baldwin’s – argument is that we’ve had enough of smoother and more glittering premiers in recent years, and could do now with someone rougher, solid, honest, and more cerebral. He could turn out to be the Attlee pour nos jours. (Can there be any disputing that Clement Attlee was the greatest peacetime British prime minister of the 20^th century?)

From an electoral point of view he has a lot going for him. His given name – Keir – links him with the first leader of the Labour Party, which should warm him to the historically-minded Left. His father was a toolmaker and his mother a nurse, which attest to his genuine (aspirant) working-class origins. The ‘Sir’ which is now affixed to his name was awarded for his previous career as Director of Public Prosecutions, and not for party favours or donations, which seems to be the usual passage to a knighthood in these corrupt times. The fact that he had a serious job stands him apart from those – mostly but not exclusively Tories – whose only previous life-experience was in cheap journalism or student politics. And it will good to have a leader whose early world view was not framed at a ‘public’ boarding school. He went to a local (London) grammar school, then to a northern university (Leeds), and managed to avoid Oxford, apart from a year there doing a postgraduate Law degree. His legal expertise was in Criminal and Human Rights Law, rather than fields which might have earned him more money. (But he’s still obviously comfortably off, if not so filthy rich as Sunak.) ‘Human Rights’ distinguishes him usefully from many of today’s Tories. He’s married with teen-aged children, which makes him very normal; and lives in an ordinary terraced house (I think). He’s soccer-mad (Arsenal), and still regularly plays eight-a-side. He enjoys a pint at his local pub, with a bunch of ‘mates’ who are socially varied. He’s serious, sometimes wooden, in public, but apparently loosens up in private, when the ‘real Keir’ is said to shine through. Critics wish that it would shine through more. He presents the image of a man of honesty, integrity, a sense of public service and what in the 18th century was called ‘bottom’, which contrasts strikingly with most of his predecessors, save possibly the unfortunate Theresa May. – Much of this resonates personally with me; as does his defence of the arts – announced in a speech yesterday – which contrasts markedly with Sunak’s and much of the latter’s party’s materialistic Gradgrindism. Whether any of it will attract other voters is yet to be seen.

My own reservations have to do with (a) his caution, although that might be necessary to dampen down expectations, in view of the almost universally acknowledged economic and social mess the Conservatives will have left behind them; and (b) his treatment of those who briefly ran the party before him, many of whom he has very publicly banished. As an old ‘Corbynista’ myself, who resigned from the Party on these grounds, I feel strongly and even bitterly about this, and against the false anti-semitism that was ‘weaponised’ in order to get rid of Corbyn and others when Starmer came along (see https://bernardjporter.com/2024/02/09/anti-semitism/). But I’ve returned to the Party now, realising that this is only one issue among many; and that if giving the impression of having cleansed the Augean stables is necessary for victory, and for warding off the fast approaching ‘neo-fascism’ in our politics, we may all need to hold our noses and jump.