FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON — The unexpected photo is hanging on a panel full of yellow post-its behind his desk. Judy, the secretary who organizes his diary, spreads her arms almost apologetically. “I don’t know how it ended up there, but he must have put it there himself: he’s his absolute idol.” Wearing the red and white jersey from when he played for Ajaxa young Johan Cruyff smiles at Keir Starmer every time he opens the door, returning from those that the likely new prime minister of the United Kingdom calls it “my triple meal days.” Three breakfasts, three lunches, often three dinners.
The last stop before returning to London to his constituency headquarters in Camden was in Hucknall, a small town in the county of Nottingham, at the foot of the so-called Labour red wall, the working-class lands of the Midlands and Northern England, which collapsed under the blows of Boris Johnson’s histrionic populism in 2019. “Lord Starmer, can you get home before 6 pm?” a militant asked him late in the afternoon, while they were kicking a ball together on the local football team’s pitch. “I don’t think so,” was the reply. “But thank God it’s not Friday yet.”
When things can go well, they will. Starmer’s election campaign seems to be subverting commonplaces. Even the controversy of the day has turned in his favor for the umpteenth time. During the usual morning radio broadcast, he reiterates that he wants to give quality time to his children, as any parent says. “So on Fridays, as usual, I will not do anything work-related after six in the afternoon, no matter what happens.” But the Tories attack headlong: “He’s a clock-in guy,” “He’ll be a part-time prime minister.”
It also intervenes Rishi Sunakto point out that since he is in Downing street has never stopped at 6pm, on the contrary. A few hours pass, and the suspicion of having made yet another mistake in a Donald Duck-like electoral campaign is spreading among the Conservatives. But the mysterious Victoria, the Reluctant First Ladyobsessed with privacy to the point that no one knows the names of the couple’s two children, isn’t she perhaps of the Jewish religion? Ouch.
Come in Francethe English election campaign also had the theme of the subtextcreeping anti-semitism. It’s yes Arsenal season ticket holder and a second-time supporter of Ajax, the team from the Amsterdam ghetto, Starmer does not miss the opportunity to score another goal on the counterattack: “For some religions, Friday night is an important moment. But it also counts the will to be with my loved ones.”
It’s not true that Keir Starmer is just profiting from the dissolution of the Tories. In the small, equally carefully chosen Camden office in one of the few tenement houses in the neighborhood, his devoted assistants say that “he has all the right credentials.” Starting with the working class originswaved with pride, despite graduating from Oxford and residence in the wealthy enclave of Kentish Town also make him an example of the British upper class.
He was born in 1962 on the outskirts of London to his father Rod, a toolmaker in a factory, and Josephine, a nurse on leave due to a serious illness. Both socialists, his parents called him Keir, which in Gaelic means “dark”, in homage to the leader of the Scottish miners Keir Hardie. His father forbids him to watch television. He reacts by developing a mania for football, which today he uses as a metaphor for any subject. Just yesterday he was asked if he would ever have imagined he could one day become prime minister: “My four brothers couldn’t go to university. I was the first in the family to do so. There was always a voice in my head that told me: people like you don’t become MPs.”
Starmer the dark starts out as a lawyer. It is in this capacity that he meets his colleague “Vic”, who in 1997 is doing the volunteer for Tony Blair’s campaign. She converts him to vegetarianism, not total, and introduces him to the London Jewish community. In 2019, when becomes secretary of a disastrous Labour Party accused of anti-Semitismthe general belief is that the man with the good-natured face and never brilliant speech is a passing figure. Keir and Vic, who repeatedly convinces him not to give up, have other ideas. Starmer starts a kind of shock therapy. Praise Margaret Thatcher as a “shining example of public service.”
Addresses the issue of costs of ecological transitiona taboo on the left. And it abolishes any discussion about Brexiteven defined as “an opportunity to be perfected”. The real revolution is the removal of elements that smell of anti-Semitism, starting with his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. Slowly, and not without contradictions, Labour is once again becoming a drinkable choice for the middle class. The Tories will do the rest. Starmer never has any great moments, but he is committed to conveying an image of solidity to a country frightened by its own decline.
Yesterday, on the pitch at Hucknall, he was also asked how he would define himself. He thought about it for a moment. “I’m a person who, when he notices a problem, tries to solve it. Many people think that passion consists of shouting and insulting. For me, it’s about fixing things, making them better.” Immediately after, Keir Starmer turned and with his left foot, as his idol Cruyff often loved to do, kicked the ball, which entered the empty net.
