LABOUR LEADER KEIR Starmer has led his party to a landslide win in the UK general election, taking 411 seats out of the 650 available.
With the Conservatives registering a dismal loss of 248 seats, Rishi Sunak looks set to depart 10 Downing Street after the disappointing vote for his party.
While the number of seats won by Labour is near-historic, it has been suggested that the win is more down to disillusionment with the Tories than a fondness for Keir Starmer and Labour.
Keir Starmer has served as the leader of the opposition and leader of the Labour party since 2020.
At 61, Starmer will be be the oldest person to become British Prime Minister on first appointment since Labour’s James Callaghan in 1976.
The incoming PM was born and raised in London. His mother suffered from a rare disease which ultimately saw her pass away just before Starmer’s initial election in 2015.
Named for Labour’s founding father Keir Hardie, who was a Scottish trade unionist before he became the party’s first leader, Starmer has played into his working class roots on the campaign trail. He used the phrase “My dad was a toolmaker, my mum was a nurse” so often that it became a running joke – one that he fully leaned into.
Starmer attended the University of Oxford and the University of Leeds, where he pursued legal studies. He served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013, having been appointed during Labour’s Gordon Brown’s reign as prime minister.
He oversaw the prosecution of MPs for abusing their expenses, journalists for phone-hacking, and young rioters involved in unrest across England.
In 2014, he received a knighthood for his work in criminal justice.
He has been an MP for Holborn and St Pancras in central London since 2015.
Starmer is a married father of two, and notoriously private of his personal life. His two teenage children remain nameless within the media, though his wife, Victoria Starmer, is known to be an occupational therapist in the NHS.
After only nine years in politics, Starmer has now seized the majority for Labour after 14 years of Conservative rule. In the 2019 general election, just before Starmer took over leadership of the party from Jeremy Corbyn, Labour received its worst defeat since 1935.
Even supporters of Starmer and Labour admit that he is not wildly charismatic, but perhaps some of his appeal may lie here – he appears to be a sturdy, sensible presence that has clearly had great success in steering Labour back from its disastrous performance in 2019.
Back then, Labour finished with a total of 203 seats in comparison to the Tories’ 365.
Now, Labour have pushed ahead and secured 411 seats while the Tories lag behind on 119 seats.
After taking the reins four years ago, Starmer re-centred the party from where it had moved further left under Corbyn in order to make it more electable.
In 2020, Starmer suspended left-wing socialist Corbyn from the party following his reaction to a report into antisemitism in the party during his leadership. Starmer then continued with a purge of left-wing socialism, leaving behind a number of policies as he sought to move towards centrism.
His rooting out of antisemitism within the party further helped Labour appeal to voters from a range of different areas and backgrounds
The left have accused him of betrayal for the shedding of pledges to implement policies including the scrapping of university tuition fees, increasing income tax, and nationalising a number of public services in the UK.
He also came under fire for Labour’s abandonment of its £28 billion (€33 billion) annual green investment pledge, having said the reversal was due to the Tories’ crashing of the economy.
Labour have a long to-do list ahead of them as they enter parliament as government for the first time in 14 years. Among the priorities listed by the party, tackling the economy, healthcare, and immigration are high on the list.
Labour have ruled out increasing income tax, national insurance welfare contributions and VAT sales tax – though other tax increases have yet to be ruled out. It hopes to eliminate tax breaks for non-domiciled UK residents, reduce tax avoidance and impose VAT on private school fees.
In tackling issues facing healthcare in the UK, it says it will deliver two million more NHS appointments and promises to double the number of MRI and CT scanners in the NHS.
Keir Starmer has pledged to ditch the Conservative plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in his first days as leader – though Rishi Sunak has raised doubts about whether Starmer’s pledge to return failed asylum applicants to their countries will come to fruition.
With additional reporting from AFP
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