With Keir Starmer at the helm, Labour wins British elections with an absolute majority

Labour won a landslide victory in the British general electionaccording to the first exit polls, after the closure of the polling stations, which will put an end to 14 years of conservative governments.

According to these estimates by British television, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party would obtain 410 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, with a comfortable advantage over the Conservatives of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, punished by voters, who would obtain 131, their worst result in an election since the beginning of the 20th century.

Keir Starmerthe lawyer who changed the direction of the Labour Party to bring it closer to more centrist positions, will be the seventh British prime minister of his political party, after putting an end to fourteen years of conservative governments.

The emergence of Starmer It also coincides with the centenary of the coming to power of the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who held office between January and November 1924.

Following Labour’s baptism at the head of the government, the political party enjoyed a golden period in the sixties and seventies, with Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, before the arrival of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, prime ministers between 1997 and 2010.

Starmer, 61, has taken over from Blair and Brown, defeating the current Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunakwho was in office for less than two years.

With his victory, Starmer, a football fan and Arsenal fan, was able to erase the recent disappointment of seeing Manchester City take the English league title ahead of his team.

At the end of May he went to his favourite London pub, The Landseer Arms, near Arsenal’s stadium, to watch the London side in the last match of the season, without his team winning the title.

With his new position as British Prime Minister, it will now be more difficult for the Labour leader to go to the pub or mingle with the crowd at the Gunners stadium, where he has been a season ticket holder for years.

Laborite from the cradle

Starmer, a Labour supporter from birth, having inherited his given name from Keir Hadie, founder and first leader of the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century, took over the reins of the party four years ago.

The politician took over from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a proponent of a more leftist ideology, as head of the party in April 2020, following a severe setback for Labour in the 2019 general elections.

Following that failure, Starmer changed the course of the party, distancing it from Corbyn’s more radical theses.

Starmer first entered parliament as a Labour Party member after being elected to the London borough of Holborn and St Pancras in 2015.

He therefore entered politics late, at the age of 52. An age at which former Labour leader Tony Blair ceased to be the leader of the party.

But his ambition to fly high in politics was made clear from the beginning, when he was asked some time ago how he would like to be remembered.

“As someone who delivered a bold, reformist Labour government. As a great father and friend“, he summed up in that interview.

And that dream of entering Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister, has come true.

Vegetarian and football fanatic

Born in the London borough of Southwark, in the south of the city, he studied law at the University of Leeds, and continued his training as a lawyer at Oxford.

Self-assured, Starmer once said he would beat Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, if the two met in a football match.

“I play football every week, in the middle of the field, directing. Many people say that the important thing is to participate. I am not of that opinion. What counts is winning.“, he noted on another occasion.

Starmer is the first vegetarian to become head of the British government.

A highly reputable lawyer, he met his wife, Victoria, with whom he has two children, through work-related issues, as she is also a lawyer.

The surname Starmer originates from the name of a person whose personality or appearance resembles a star (Star in English).

After almost a decade and a half of Conservative dominance, Starmer has become the new star of the Labour Party.