PeakNews Online
1. Keir Starmer is a human rights lawyer who once called for the British monarchy to be abolished, but years later knelt before Charles, then prince of Wales, to be knighted.
2. He was also rumoured to be the 1990s inspiration for a brooding heart throb character in the Bridget Jones movies. More recently, he took a knee in support of Black Lives Matter.
3. Starmer, 61, is a social liberal, fiscal moderate and leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party.
4. He has been a member of parliament since 2015, and leader of the opposition — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s main rival — since 2020.
5. Starmer’s parents were “proper old-fashioned socialists” who may have named their son after Keir Hardie, a 19th century Scottish trade unionist, who founded the Labour Party in 1900, says Tom Baldwin, author of Keir Starmer: The Biography.
6. He grew up in an affluent, conservative suburb of London.
7. Starmer went to public school.
8. His mother Josephine was a nurse in Britain’s National Health Service, or NHS.
9. He joined the Young Socialists, the youth wing of the Labour Party, at age 16.
10. In 2014, Starmer received a knighthood for his criminal justice work, becoming Sir Keir.
