Who is Keir Starmer, the next British Prime Minister?

This article was originally published in English

The British made their decision on Thursday. They turned the page on fourteen years of conservatism according to the first exit polls.

A landslide victory for Keir Sarmer, the leader of the Labour Party.

But who is Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party who set to replace Rishi Sunak as prime minister from the United Kingdom ?

Born in London in 1962, Mr Starmer was a human rights lawyer before becoming Director of Public Prosecutions (Prosecutor) from 2008 to 2013.

During the election campaign, he was keen to highlight his working-class origins, mentioning several times during televised debates that his father was a toolmaker and his mother a nurse.

Indeed, his association with left-wing politics is not new, as he shares his rare first name with Keir Hardie, who founded the Labour Party in the late nineteenth century.

He became an MP in 2015 for the constituency of Camden, north London, where in 2019 he won almost 65% of the vote, a good result for an election that was otherwise marked by heavy losses for the Labour Party.

Corbyn’s successor

He became party leader in 2020, when his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn faced multiple electoral defeats after which he eventually stepped down.

Keir Starmer won more than 56% of the vote against two other candidates, one of whom, Lisa Nandy, is now his shadow secretary of state for international development.

Mr Starmer has also had a long involvement with European issues, having served as Mr Corbyn’s Brexit spokesman from 2016 to 2020, a period when political fervour over the outcome of the UK’s fateful referendum was at its peak.

He defended the idea of ​​remaining in the EU, then repeatedly pushed the government to propose a more elaborate exit strategy.or even to organize a new referendum on the issue.

But he may have changed his mind. Mr Starmer’s current election manifesto does not no return to the EU single market or customs unionalthough he has said he would like to improve Boris Johnson’s “botched” Brexit deal.

A pragmatic change

This is not the only area in which Mr Starmer has made a notable shift towards pragmatism as the prospect of power has loomed.

Unions and environmentalists have criticized his recent backtracking on its promise to finance green investments to the tune of £28bn (€33bn) a year, a U-turn he said was necessary to balance the books.

He has also failed to repair relations with the left of his own party, particularly Corbyn, whom Mr Starmer suspended from the party following an anti-Semitism scandal.

Corbyn is now running against Labour as an independent candidate in the London constituency where he has been an MP since the 1980s. It will be known on Thursday night whether he will win again.

With the powerful majority that Labour has just won, its largest ever – compared to Jeremy Corbyn’s two successive defeats – Keir Starmer may consider that this blow was worth striking.