One person, each day, to help make sense of the election.
The UK’s newest prime minister has only been an MP for nine years, yet has managed the almost impossible. When he took over the leadership of the Labour party during the first Covid lockdown of 2020, Starmer was viewed as a caretaker: someone who could purge Labour of the Corbynites (who had taken the party to its worst defeat since 1935) and start to rebuild trust. That work is still in progress, and will now be fully tested, as Starmer gives up his Kentish Town home for 10 Downing Street. Famously the son of a toolmaker, Starmer trained as a barrister and took on a series of high-profile cases against Shell and McDonalds among others. As director of public prosecutions, he was the figurehead for cases brought by the Crown Prosecution Service against a handful MPs (during the expenses scandal) and journalists including Rebekah Brooks (over phone hacking). This week’s endorsement by The Sun, although lukewarm, was therefore something of a surprise. During the campaign Starmer was criticised (and defended) for having said he wanted to carve out time for his children on Friday nights. Whether he will manage that today seems unlikely – but there might be time for a short celebration before the hard work begins in earnest.
