Keir Starmer: ‘People need hope, but it needs to be realistic hope’

(Article)

—

Britain’s next prime minister — barring a flabbergasting reversal — is sitting next to me in Southampton’s Retro Cafe chewing a hash brown as he takes a break from electioneering.

Amid the frantic rhythm of the campaign trail, we don’t have long. And Sir Keir Starmer, fresh from a visit to the local port, keeps getting waylaid by customers and staff wanting to meet the Labour party leader.

Starmer seems on the brink of the first Labour general election win for 19 years, possibly by a landslide, a scenario that would have seemed far-fetched when he became leader four years ago. Yet change is in the political air.

The smiling 61-year-old sports a navy blue Sandro suit, open-necked pale blue shirt and a gelled silver quiff of hair. He seems neither happy nor unhappy about the sudden appearance of an £11 vegetarian fry-up, chosen on his behalf by an aide from the menu of this cosy little eatery.

With just a couple of weeks to go before polling, Starmer starts each day with a dawn conference call before a pinball journey across the UK to a bewildering variety of stage-managed events. It’s a frenzy of press interviews, speeches, debates, round-table meetings and photo ops in scores of towns and cities. “It’s every day, and it’s day after day after day after day,” he says. But he’s not complaining: “I’ve waited four and a half years for this.”

Labour’s risk-averse campaign has so far avoided the endless gaffes that have dogged struggling Conservative party leader Rishi Sunak — including a rain-soaked election launch and an early exit from D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Starmer looks blank when I ask if he feels sorry for his main rival. “I don’t think about it. He wanted to be leader. He took it up . . . Although I have no personal animosity to him.”

Not long ago the north London MP was dismissed as a grey figure struggling to gain traction, a powerless Olaf Scholz or Anthony Albanese. Now he is selling his offer of prosaic stability as the antidote to years of political chaos involving Brexit, Covid, Boris Johnson’s rollercoaster leadership and then Liz Truss’s unorthodox six-week premiership. A fatigued voting public seems ready to give him a chance.

Starmer says his slogan could easily be “Make Britain Serious Again” before declaring: “There is a degree of steadfast seriousness that is much needed across the country.”

The snap election has put paid to our plans for a leisurely lunch in London but Starmer will still find an hour and a half to chat, albeit in a conversation spread over two train journeys and a bolted café meal.

It’s easy to mistake Starmer for a career politician, not least given his sometimes tedious message discipline. But the workaholic former lawyer, who did not enter politics until his fifties, sees himself as a Westminster outsider, telling me he hates the “shallowness and tribalism” of the political bubble.

“People will constantly say go faster, go slower, go louder, go softer,” he says. “Finding your way through that is really important. You do have to stop the ‘noises off’, otherwise you lurch all over the place. I’ve become quite good at blocking out some of those noises.”

Beneath the sometimes bland, careful mien, there lurks a man of acutely competitive instincts. Starmer, an Arsenal fan, hates losing his regular eight-a-side football game. As a youngster he quit the flute, despite winning a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music, because he wasn’t top-flight. “Maybe that does tell you something about me,” he says. “If I can’t be the best, I’ll leave it in the cupboard.”

Likewise he hated Labour’s electoral losses in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019. It is why he didn’t mind making enemies in his efforts to turn the party around. And it explains why in 2021, initially struggling to get results, he almost threw in the towel.

He likes a pint of ale or lager but can’t remember the last time he got drunk. “The answer is not never, but I cannot remember.” I can’t imagine him wanting to lose control? “No, I’m not very good at that,” he says.

Starmer is quite good-humoured but never frivolous. When I ask him who he would push off a cliff — Nigel Farage, Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Corbyn — he sighs. “I hate these quick-fire questions, they are a bugbear to me. You can’t reduce everything to yes/no answers.”

Nor is he always forthcoming. When I ask if all the shadow cabinet will keep their current roles in government, he replies: “Jim, don’t start asking questions you know I’m not going to answer — I’ve only got so much time.”
Some opinion polls have predicted a result that would have seemed outlandish until recently: a Labour “supermajority” in the House of Commons with more than 400 MPs and the Conservatives reduced to fewer than 100.

Does he pinch himself when he sees the polls? “No, because I was among the small group of people who thought we could do this in five years,” he says through a mouthful of food. “Although we’ve got to a better position than I could have imagined.”

As I tuck into my fish finger sandwich, I ask him how he felt after one Labour grandee said that he needed to “shed a few pounds”. “I couldn’t care less, honestly, I’m very comfortable in my own skin.” he replies. His teenagers keep him grounded by mocking his cream chinos or wondering why anyone would want to listen to his speeches. “Peter Mandelson is no match for them.”

I ask how he feels about being called Sir Keir. “I don’t mind, but if I’m honest I prefer Keir,” he says. He says the title carries an assumption about his background. “Which is why it’s important for me to remind people that my dad was a toolmaker and my mum was a nurse.

“No one just gives you anything when you’re working-class, you have to work for it, not having a base camp of wealth and privilege.”

He attributes his resilience to his mother, who suffered from the rare inflammatory disorder Still’s disease; despite enduring repeated operations, she never complained. “They told her she wouldn’t be able to walk by the time she was 20 and she wouldn’t be able to have kids, and she defied that.”

I ask how his parents would feel if they could see him on the threshold of Number 10 Downing Street: “They would be so proud. I can see my mum beaming,” he says, a piece of avocado on his fork.

He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “The only reason I’m hesitating is because my dad was slow to say, ‘Well done’ to me, or take pride in what I was doing, but unbeknown to me he was saving all these cuttings of what I’d achieved.”

Starmer has admitted he didn’t tell his father that he loved him in his final days: “If he was still here it would be a moment for me to have a bit of that closure, which, it’s my own fault, we didn’t get,” he tells me.

When Starmer first became a member of parliament in 2015, having previously been director of public prosecutions, his ambition was only to become attorney-general under a government headed by Ed Miliband, the then Labour leader. “But events took their course.”

He says he has a “steely determination” but not an ego: “I’m not in this for me. You know when you go to someone’s house and they have pictures of themselves with politicians or outside Number 10 on their mantelpiece or in the loo, you won’t see that anywhere in my house,” he says. “This is not about me getting into Number 10, it’s about getting a Labour government.”

Even close allies never thought he’d rebuild Labour so fast after its implosion in the December 2019 general election under former left-wing leader Corbyn. Starmer has benefited from a series of self-inflicted disasters by various Conservative prime ministers. Yet he says Labour was in a position to benefit only because he had moved the party back on to the centre ground. “You have to make your own luck,” he argues.

Labour has aped Tory language on immigration, crime and Brexit to bring back blue-collar former voters. Corbyn has been expelled from the party. I ask Starmer if he deliberately misled the Labour left when he won the 2020 leadership race on a more radical mandate — or whether he has since had a Damascene conversion to centrism.

Climate, climate, climate…unfortunately their steady as she goes approach is very Gareth Southgate…too little too late!

Realistic hope like a privatised NHS and bidding for rent?  A nationalised energy company that’s actually just an investment vehicle that is scalped by middlemen? Not exactly a bold vision is it. 

 Starmers not some sort of struggling local councillor in a post soviet state, he’s going to become the most powerful man in the 6th richest country in the world.  

 If his main line of offence is he’s gonna unfuck the economy;  surely inspire the rest of us with what he can do with those trillions.  Borrow, lend and fucking spend rather than just rubbing his hands and promising austerity. 

Yes of course. I ‘hope’ we can continue privatising the NHS and do nothing to deal with its overcapacity except ask staff to work harder.

The country could be fixed a lot quicker if he had the balls to talk about the ever growing elephant in the room… Brexit.

He won’t be able to achieve his growth driven economy without a return to the single market.

Starmer is certainly not the one to give it. He and his party just aren’t enthusiastic. At least with Farage he’s motivating people and he’s entertaining. He’s making people realise that this system is designed to keep these hyper high class political types in power raking in our money and abusing it. I hope every party gets a couple seats we might actually start seeing some change. Instead of this same slight power shift between Labour and Conservatives.

“Realistic” is a guise to offer more of the same. Kieth Starmer can shove it.

Realistic hope aka you get nothing you fucking peasants.

His weakness will lead to reform/tories getting power in 5 years.

There is no money, Liz Truss proved it

They will raise taxes, they won’t improve anything

This applies to all parties

It’s fucking bizarre how commited Starmer seems to be at being as uninspirational as possible at every given opportunity.

The guy can’t even explain what a working class person is.

Say it once more and don’t say you weren’t warned. This sub is a sock puppet sanctuary for Agent Sir Kid Starver. Kiss the NHS bye if you let him and his genocidal financial supporters anywhere near power.

Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re here to shatter our dreams

It’s hard to believe in anything currently. Other than Joe Hendry of course.

Going for the the David Cameron “Broken Britain” approach.

Nothing is going to get better. Nothing Labour intends to do will improve the situation for people.

Hope they write that on his grave..
“People need hope, but..”

“People would like hope, but we don’t intend to give ’em any.”

I love that Kier, as an extremely likeable and charismatic leader with conviction, can give this to us.