Keir Starmer

Born in Southwark and raised in Surrey, Starmer was politically active young, went on to read law at Leeds and Oxford, and spent two decades as a barrister specialising in human rights and criminal defence. He took silk in 2002, advised the Northern Ireland Policing Board, then ran the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013, handling cases like the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry and earning a knighthood for it. He entered Parliament in 2015, backed Remain, served as Shadow Brexit Secretary under Corbyn, and won the Labour leadership in 2020 after the party's 2019 rout. He pulled Labour toward the centre, scrubbed out antisemitism battles, and led it to a July 2024 landslide that ended fourteen years of Tory rule - though on the smallest vote share of any majority government since records began in 1830. His government cut winter fuel payments, released prisoners early to ease overcrowding, settled strikes, scrapped the Rwanda deportation scheme, tightened migration rules, and pushed planning reform and a nuclear build. He backed Ukraine, called for a Gaza ceasefire, recognised Palestine, and chased trade deals with India, the EU, the US, and warmer terms with