The job is not in the bag unless and until the votes have been cast in Labour‘s favour – as he and his close advisers are the first to point out.
But all the circumstantial evidence from elections and opinion polls suggests that Starmer is far and away the person most likely to be the occupant of 10 Downing Street after the general election due in the next 11 months.
PMIW is not a status conferred on all opposition leaders. Interest only peaks when a change of government is in the air. Scrutiny turns from the struggling incumbent prime minister to new hope.
Tony Blair, before 1997, and David Cameron, before 2010, both basked in the attention.
Starmer is less comfortable in the spotlight. Yet, in spite of his reticence, at the equivalent stage in his pursuit of power he is more of an odds-on favourite to take over the government than Blair or Cameron ever were.
Image: Tony Blair was popular ahead of his election win in 1997. Pic: PA
So, who is Sir Keir Starmer, the UK’s likely next prime minister? A flurry of interviews and profiles are all part of the full PMIW treatment, topped off by a campaign biography of the candidate.
On cue, Keir Starmer: The Biographyis published next week. The blurb insists the book is “authoritative – not authorised”, but it is based on “many hours of interviews” with Sir Keir, his family, friends and close colleagues.
The original plan was for Tom Baldwin, a Timesjournalist turned spokesman for then Labour leader Ed Miliband, to ghost write a Starmer autobiography. With typical modesty, Starmer abandoned that idea and decided to leave Baldwin to produce his own sympathetic portrait independently.
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The book was “written”, Baldwin says, “with the respect a serious grown-up leader deserves”.
A lot changes when a political leader becomes a PMIW. At the recent Munich Defence Conference, the diaries of foreign leaders quickly clear if for a meeting with the coming man.
Starmer’s dance card there included US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and heads of government of Germany, Finland, Estonia and Ireland.
Rishi Sunak did not attend. David Cameron and Grant Shapps represented the UK government.
Image: Rishi Sunak looks likely to leave Downing Street at the next election. Pic: PA
As is normal practice before a general election, the opposition have been granted access to senior civil servants to discuss their plans for government if they win.
These activities are being scrutinised closely, especially when they involved Sue Gray, the widely feared former civil service enforcer who is now Starmer’s chief of staff.
Gray’s name was linked – inaccurately and inflammatorily – to the talks with Speaker Hoyle over the Israel-Gaza votes in the Commons. Fallout is still crashing down from Hoyle’s decision to break with precedent.
Meanwhile, rightly or wrongly, the UK parliament’s agreed position on “an immediate ceasefire” is the amendment, slowly and painfully put together by the leader of the opposition.
For all the sound and fury, the tectonic plates under British government seem to have shifted prematurely on this foreign policy matter.
One recurring feature of Starmer’s life story is that he has been “a lucky general”, as Napoleon put it.
Circumstances have often gone in his favour and he has made the best of them, although he has done little or nothing to bring them about.
He owes his PMIW standing in large part by default to the self-destructive missteps of recent Conservative governments.
Image: Keir Starmer has benefited from a series of mistakes by the Tories. Pic: PA
Baldwin cannot take his thoroughly researched book past the start of this campaign year into contemporary events.
He can tell the reader a great deal about how Starmer got here and delve into his life story.
Starmer habitually tags his public appearances with the terse summary “my mother was a nurse, my dad was a toolmaker, money was short, the telephone was sometimes cut off”.
This sends out a signal to Britain’s class-conscious society that first impressions are wrong about The Right Honourable Keir Starmer KC MP.
Starmer is neither “posh” nor a hereditary baronet, but he is hoping to emulate Labour’s election winning trio of Prime Ministers Attlee, Wilson and Blair.
The Labour frontbencher Nick Thomas-Symonds has written biographies of Attlee and Wilson and tells Baldwin that “Keir is far more working class than either of them, not only in terms of the background alone but because it’s combined with a defining story of aspiration”.
Starmer will be the first prime minister since Gordon Brown not to have been an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, although after Leeds University he continued his upward trajectory there as a post-graduate.
He was the only one of his siblings to go to a selective grammar school in Reigate.
The only time his father praised him, he said he was proud of him passing the 11-plus, later adding that he was also as proud of his brother, who had learning difficulties.
His childhood was happy, but hard graft. His father Ron was remote and his mother suffered from a debilitating illness. Starmer flourished nonetheless.
He was a key player in local amateur football teams and won a flute scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music.
In words that could sum up his approach to other aspects of his life, Starmer comments of the Guildhall that there were people there who were “properly gifted… whereas I was just someone who had got to a certain level through practice, repetition and hard work”.
Starmer, who is 62, came late to Westminster politics and was only elected to his seat of Holborn and St Pancras, in inner north London, in 2015.
Image: Keir Starmer as a Labour candidate in 2015, flanked by Sadiq Khan and Yvette Cooper. Pic: PA
Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, describes Starmer as “the least political person in politics I know”. Yet his commitment to Labour runs through his life.
His parents named him after the party’s founder Keir Hardie. At election times, their pebble-dashed home was festooned with Labour posters.
Keir joined the Young Socialists as a teenager and canvassed on the doorstep. Members of the public complained to his headmaster about rowdy arguments on the top of the bus to school, often with a classmate who remains a friend, Andrew Sullivan, now a leading liberal conservative commentator in the US.
As a young barrister, Starmer joined the progressive Doughty Street Chambers and sought out human rights cases, especially fighting the death penalty.
His switch to become Director of Public Prosecutions was a surprise “curveball” for his friends and fellow lawyers.
His motives are not adequately explained in the biography beyond a comment that he thought everyone would benefit from swifter and more efficient justice.
For all his ambition, Starmer applies strict standards to himself. He has nearly quit twice since becoming leader – after Labour lost the Hartlepool byelection to Boris Johnson and when he said he would resign if fined over “beergate”, the drink with party activists during the pandemic.
The overriding image of Starmer from the book is of a determined and pragmatic man, driven to win and prepared to compromise to get there.
Image: Keir Starmer defending serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet. Pic: PA
He justifies staying in Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet, calculating that only someone who had served under him would be elected by the membership as the next leader.
Later, his luck held as Corbyn and his close allies disqualified themselves over antisemitism.
Starmer’s friends say the humour, generosity and loyalty of the man they know do not come across from the politician they see on the television.
His biographer makes the interesting observation that public exposure is loosening Sir Keir up.
Labour’s published proposal for transforming Britain is modest, and the economic circumstances are constraining.
For all that, the Prime Minister In Waiting’s last words in the book are “I just want to get things done”.
Sky News can reveal that the government has rowed back on a national compensation scheme for victims of child sexual abuse, despite it being promised under the previous Conservative administration.
Warning – this story contains references to sexual and physical abuse
A National Redress Scheme was one of 20 key recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), but a Home Office report reveals the government has scrapped it because of the cost.
Marie, who is 71, suffered alleged sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at Greenfield House Convent in St Helens, Merseyside, between 1959 and 1962, and is still fighting for compensation.
Image: Greenfield House Convent, where Marie says she was abused
As soon as she arrived as a six-year-old, Marie says her hair was cut off, her name changed, and she experienced regular beatings from the nuns and students.
She claims a nun instigated the violence, including when Marie was held down so that her legs were “spread-eagled” as she was sexually abused with a coat hanger.
Merseyside Police investigated claims of abuse at the convent, but in 2016, a suspect died before charges could be brought.
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Marie has received an apology from the Catholic body that ran the home; she tried to sue them, but her claim was rejected because it was filed too long after the alleged abuse.
Image: Marie, 71, is still fighting for compensation for the abuse she says she suffered as a child
In February, ministers said the law would change for victims of sexual abuse trying to sue institutions for damages, which was a recommendation from the IICSA.
Previously, people had to make a civil claim before they were 21, unless the victim could prove a fair trial could proceed despite the time lapse.
Campaigners argued for the time limit to be removed as, on average, victims wait 26 years to come forward. Changes to the 1980 Limitation Act could lead to more people making claims.
Image: Peter Garsden, President of The Association of Child Abuse Lawyers
Civil cases ‘can take three to five years’
But Peter Garsden, president of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, worries that when it comes to historical abuse where the defendant is dead, institutions will still argue that it is impossible to have a fair trial and will fight to have the case thrown out of court.
Mr Garsden said it takes “between three and five years” for a civil case to get to trial.
He warned that claimants “can end up losing if you go through that process. Whereas the Redress Scheme would be quicker, much more straightforward, and much more likely to give justice to the victims”.
Victim awarded £10 compensation
Jimbo, who was a victim of abuse at St Aidan’s children’s home in Cheshire, took his case to the High Court twice and the Court of Appeal three times, but, after 13 years, all he ended up with was £10 for his bus fare to court.
Despite the Lord Justice of Appeal saying he believed that the abuse had occurred, Jimbo lost his claim because of the time limit for child sexual abuse claims to be made.
Neither Marie nor Jimbo is likely to benefit from the removal of the time limit for personal injury claims, which is why Mr Garsden is calling on the government to implement a National Redress Scheme for victims of sexual abuse, as recommended by the IICSA.
Hundreds of millions paid to victims
The governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland have set up compensation schemes and paid hundreds of millions of pounds to victims.
In 2023, the then Conservative government said a similar scheme would be organised for England and Wales.
But the Home Office admitted in its Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Progress Update that it “is not currently taking forward any further steps on the IICSA proposal for a separate, national financial redress scheme for all survivors of child sexual abuse”.
“In the current fiscal environment, this recommendation is very difficult to take forward,” it added.
For victims, the scheme was the last chance of compensation for a lifetime blighted by abuse.
“The money is about justice and about all the other people who have had to suffer this abuse,” Marie said.
Five men have been arrested on suspicion of the preparation of a terrorist act, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Counter-terror officers arrested the five men, four of whom are Iranian nationals, on Saturday, with all currently in police custody.
The Met said the arrests related to a “suspected plot to target a specific premises”.
In an update shortly after midnight, the force said: “Officers have been in contact with the affected site to make them aware and provide relevant advice and support, but for operational reasons, we are not able to provide further information at this time.”
It added officers were carrying out searches at a number of addresses in the Greater Manchester, London and Swindon areas in connection with the investigation.
It said those detained were:
• A 29-year-old man arrested in the Swindon area • A 46-year-old man arrested in west London • A 29-year-old man arrested in the Stockport area • A 40-year-old man arrested in the Rochdale area • A man whose age was not confirmed arrested in the Manchester area.
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Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “This is a fast-moving investigation and we are working closely with those at the affected site to keep them updated.
“The investigation is still in its early stages and we are exploring various lines of enquiry to establish any potential motivation as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public linked to this matter.
“We understand the public may be concerned and as always, I would ask them to remain vigilant and if they see or hear anything that concerns them, then to contact us.
“We are working closely with local officers in the areas where we have made arrests today and I’d like to thank police colleagues around the country for their ongoing support.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Fourteen children aged between 11 and 14 years old have been arrested after a boy died in a fire at an industrial site.
Northumbria Police said the group – 11 boys and three girls – were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after the incident in Gateshead on Friday. They remain in police custody.
Officers were called to reports of a fire near Fairfield industrial park in the Bill Quay area shortly after 8pm.
Emergency services attended, and the fire was extinguished a short time later.
Police then issued an appeal for a missing boy, Layton Carr, who was believed to be in the area at the time of the fire.
In a statement, the force said that “sadly, following searches, a body believed to be that of 14-year-old Layton Carr was located deceased inside the building”.
Layton’s next of kin have been informed and are being supported by specialist officers, police added.
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Detective Chief Inspector Louise Jenkins, of Northumbria Police, also said: “This is an extremely tragic incident where a boy has sadly lost his life.”
She added that the force’s “thoughts are with Layton’s family as they begin to attempt to process the loss of their loved one”, and asked that their privacy be respected.
A cordon remains in place at the site of the incident.