Who is Keir Starmer, really?
A SEPTEMBER MORNING IN DAGENHAM, where east London edges into the Essex hinterland. Roundabouts, bus shelters, roadworks. Shopping parades offering ready-made narratives: takeaway, pharmacy, funeral director. Rows of houses putting brave faces on it. Weather that can’t make up its mind.
Outside the Sydney Russell School on Parsloes Avenue, two small groups have assembled. A soundbite of news reporters. A ribbon of local worthies. And, in green blazer and yellow polo shirt, a teenage boy who has been selected from among more than 2,000 students to welcome today’s special visitor.
Word goes round: he’s only five minutes away. A respectful hush. A shuffling of feet. Right on time, from the direction of the staff car park, he approaches. Blue suit, white shirt, black shoes. Short grey hair persuaded into a parting from which it may never return. He’s accompanied by a woman in an assertive pink blazer. They stride just a little self-consciously across the Tarmac, pleased-to-be-here grins fixed in place.
“You said ‘Come back!’” he says. A greeting he may have prepared earlier. (He first visited in 2021, to observe the school’s post-lockdownreopening. Now he is honouring his promise to return.) He processes along the line, shaking hands, offering words of encouragement and gratitude. Having observed this ritual, we move inside, day passes stickered to our chests, overseen by a brace of police protection officers.
The Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party and of His Majesty’s Opposition since 2020 and, according to all polls, Britain’s Prime Minister-in-waiting, is a solidly built 61-year-old white man with the purposeful stride and plausible manner of a senior manager. Which is, in a way, exactly what he is. If Starmer in person projects anything you might not catch in his not-always-scintillating media appearances, it’s an intense focus. He’s businesslike. He’s competent. He’s on message. To his detractors, this is his curse: he’s too serious and insufficiently charismatic to be Prime Minister. To his boosters, it’s his gift: he is serious, as he should be in his position; he’s dignified, because that’s what’s required. He’s not just here for the photo op. He’s not interested in fame for its own sake. He’s here to fix things, to make a difference. (He’s also here for the photo op.)
“I get a little bit irked when I hear stuff about how he’s so serious,” Parvais Jabbar, a close friend of Starmer’s, tells me. “That’s not my experience. In private he’s an incredibly fun person to be with. But, at the same time, what I want, and I’m sure what a lot of p
