Starmer, the sober man of law who can return the government to Labour

Keir Starmer is at the gates of Downing Street as if he had never really foreseen it. This sober man of law, a prosecutor turned politician, remains an enigma to the United Kingdomeven though it is about to lead Labour out of its wilderness.

Sober is valid as boring, hermetic, dull and constrained. But it is also valid as moderate, pragmatic, rational and sensible. Apply it to taste.

The good thing about playing with your cards close to your chest is that there are so many Starmer in the collective imagination of voters in the country. And none of them seem to scare him enough to not entrust him with the keys to Number 10 Downing Street, which he is preparing to occupy this Friday.

Since the Conservative Party began its dismantling in chapters in the last legislature (first with Boris Johnson’s parties, then with Liz Truss’s fiscal calamity, finally with Rishi Sunak’s political incompetence), Starmer He has been clear that only a mistake of his own would deprive him of power.

That has angered the Labour grassroots, but at the same time sent a calming message to the country: you can give me the reins, I won’t do anything strange.

In all fairness, Starmer He has not budged ideologically one inch in years. Fiscal discipline, strict accounting, achievable promises and seriousness in management form the core of his message.

None of this will make voters jump for joy or discourage them from voting for him.

Probably Starmer It is no surprise that the polls give him a percentage of votes even lower than the one with which his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, as charismatic as he is divisive, lost the elections in 2017 (40%).

The difference is that on that occasion, the conservative Theresa May obtained 43% of the votes and this time the best forecasts place Sunak below 25%.

If we use a footballing analogy that Starmer is so fond of, this election is more like an own goal by the Tories than a spectacular last-minute Chilean by Labour.

The football theme is not trivial: football has been a central element of the campaign (most of his rallies have been held in small stadiums) and is an intrinsic part of the Labour leader’s personality, as journalist Tom Baldwin explains in the only authorised biography of Starmer, as complete as it is benevolent.

Humble origins

Despite his obsession with privacy, the candidate has repeatedly recounted the details of his childhood in a working-class family that struggled to make ends meet.

He was born in 1962 in Surrey, south of London, a traditionally bourgeois and conservative area, where he always felt, according to his biography, a little out of place.

The figure of his father, a craftsman with strong leftist convictions, is of capital importance when it comes to explaining the character.

He maintained a huge emotional distance from his four children, while devoting all his energies outside of work to caring for his wife, Jo, who suffered from a rare autoinflammatory disease.

A model student at a grammar school (public schools for the best students), he studied at the University of Leeds and later at Oxford, where he became captivated by the defence of human rights.

From a young age he flirted with the most radical branches of Labour, going so far as to proclaim in a job interview for a prestigious law firm that “Property is theft” (although he later admitted that it was a provocation).

Despite everything, those closest to him have always detected in him the essence of a ‘people’s patriot’, a man of order with an attachment to his country and its traditions, far removed from the image of an elitist and cosmopolitan lawyer with which the right portrays him.

He has never given up on football matches with his friends or his season ticket at Arsenal stadium, which keep him grounded.

An indecipherable personality

Neither his biographer nor the journalists who have followed him in recent years have managed to fully decipher Starmer.

To begin with, he is usually very reticent about talking about his personal life (nothing is known about his two children) and his convictions. The vocation and self-esteem that often accompany politicians are not evident in him.

However, he has proven to be ruthless when he sees fit. He rose to the post of head of the Prosecutor’s Office in 2008 after having built a reputation as a human rights lawyer.

Six years later he left the Public Prosecution Service to enter politics as a Labour candidate in the 2015 elections for a constituency in central London.

He soon caught the attention of Corbyn, who brought him into his team first as spokesman on Immigration and later on Brexit.

Following the leader’s resignation due to his resounding defeat in 2019, Starmer He positioned himself as a unity candidate in the primaries and was elected to rebuild the party.

Since then, he has not hesitated to purge Corbyn for his inaction against anti-Semitism and to eliminate the entire critical sector.

The outcome of five years of a change of direction seems close. Now it will be up to Starmer to navigate waters even more stormy than those of his party.

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