Keir Starmer: Wife, Children, Policies, Israel View and More

Over a week into the U.K. election race that was called early by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the opposition Labour Party—led by Keir Starmer—is polling ahead of the incumbent Conservatives. 

After five Prime Ministers in 14 years of Conservative rule—which saw the right-wing party guide policy on Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and contentious immigration reform—Labour may well be on course for an election victory on July 4.

This wasn’t always the case. Labour suffered back-to-back electoral defeats under its erstwhile leader, the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn. This will be the party’s first electoral test since being taken over by Starmer, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras and a former lawyer and prosecutor.

“Starmer has been lucky in the sense that he’s become leader at a khbrknews when the party he’s up against has just basically imploded,” Anand Menon, the director of the think tank U.K. in a Changing Europe, tells TIME. For Menon, Labour’s victory will be “comfortable but soft” as voters are not necessarily flocking to the opposition party for its policies, but rather to remove the Tories, as the Conservatives are known, from power. 

As Starmer makes his case to become the next U.K. Prime Minister this summer, here’s what to know about the British politician. 

Keir Starmer’s background

Born on Sept. 2, 1962, to a nurse mother and toolmaker father, Starmer describes his background as “working class.” Starmer grew up in Oxted, a town located 20 miles south of London and attended a free grammar school.

He became the first member of his family to receive a university education, studying undergraduate law at the University of Leeds before pursuing a postgraduate degree from Oxford University.

The bulk of Starmer’s career before politics was spent as a human-rights lawyer, during which khbrknews he took on high-profile cases against corporations such as Shell and McDonalds, and acted as legal advisor to the Northern Ireland…