Keir Starmer Biography

Keir Starmer became prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2024, leading the Labour Party as it ended a 14-year run of Conservative Party rule.

Keir Starmer grew up in the southern England town of Oxted. His mother was a nurse and his father a toolmaker, and Keir was named in honor of an old-time Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie. The first person in his family to attend college, Starmer studied law at Leeds University (graduating in 1985) and then at Oxford (graduating 1986).

He became a lawyer, working in both criminal defense and human rights law; he was especially noted for his work to end capital punishment in countries around the world. In 2002 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel, recognizing him as a distinguished senior barrister, and he worked as a human rights advisor in Northern Ireland. He was named the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008 and served in the role until 2013. He was knighted the next year for his service to the law.

Starmer turned to politics. He was elected to Parliament from Holborn and St. Pancras in the general elections of 2015. (He was re-elected in the general elections of 2017, 2019, and 2024.) Though relatively new to electoral politics, he rose swiftly through the Labour ranks, serving as the party’s shadow secretary for immigration and then Brexit under Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. After the elections of 2019, which went badly for Labour, Corbyn relinquished his role and in 2020 Starmer was elected leader of the party (or “leader of the opposition” in UK terms), though at the time Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party seemed to have a firm hold on power.

But helped along by Covid-19 and bad choices, chaos descended on Johnson and the Conservatives. The party went through two more PMs in rapid succession, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Sunak called for fresh elections in 2024, which Labour won in a landslide, claiming 412 of the 650 seats in Parliament (compared to 121 for the Conservatives, among others). On July 5, 2024, after Sunak’s resignation and a formal visit with King Charles III, Keir Starmer became prime minister.