With one year to go before the general election, Keir Starmer is refining his image as a potential future prime minister. On September 19, the 61-year-old leader of the British Labour opposition was received by President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace, a few days after visits to Canada and the Netherlands. The Conservative majority was annoyed at France's departure from custom – a leader usually only meets the head of another country's opposition if they are from their own political camp. However, not many Tories believe in the possibility of victory: Labour is at least 15 points ahead in the polls. The British people seem weary of 13 years of Tory rule, the scandals of the Boris Johnson era and the disastrous tenure of Liz Truss.
Elected as a member of parliament in 2015, Keir Starmer applies the same discipline to politics as to when he was Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales. After replacing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in April 2020, Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, removed all those who refused to take anti-Semitism allegations seriously, including Jeremy Corbyn himself. He then neutralized potential rivals and those without sufficient experience of power. His critics say they have difficulty understanding his convictions, and believe he is more in it to win than to defend ideas.
In order to have a chance of getting into power, Labour must position itself in the center, and this is what Starmer has done. He has marginalized the left wing of the party (the Corbynistas) and developed policies marked by budgetary discipline and a firm line on immigration and security. He has promised to get rid of laws limiting the right to strike but he refuses to make a commitment to an increase in social security benefits. Even his plan to invest in the green economy (€32 billion per year) has been revised downwards. He refuses to openly stand with the labor unions and denounces climate activists when they cause disruption.
The MP with thick hair and piercing eyes likes to talk about his humble origins: his working-class father and mother who was a nurse, both Labour activists, named him after James Keir Hardie, one of the founders of Labour in 1893. Starmer was not privately educated, unlike Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, or previous Conservative leaders. And he's the first in his family to have gone to university: he studied law at Leeds and then Oxford. He has only one avowed passion: football. He plays for an amateur club in north London and is a staunch supporter of Arsenal. In fact, he presented Emmanuel Macron with an Arsenal shirt when they met.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.