He was a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama until the age of 18, and played the flute, piano, recorder and violin. In his teenage years Starmer was active in Labour politics, and was a member of the East Surrey Young Socialists. Among his classmates were musician Norman Cook, alongside whom Starmer took violin lessons, Andrew Cooper, who went on to become a Conservative peer, and future conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan: according to Starmer, he and Sullivan "fought over everything. He passed the 11-plus examination and gained entry to Reigate Grammar School, then a voluntary aided selective grammar school, although it was converted into an independent fee-paying school in 1976 while he was there (although he was exempt from paying fees). His parents were Labour Party supporters, and named him after the party's first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie. He was born the second of the four children of Josephine ( née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker. Keir Rodney Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962 and grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey. Starmer's tenure as leader has been marked by his opposition to some of the Conservative government's COVID-19 pandemic measures, and has included removing the party whip from his predecessor, a by-election loss in the previously Labour seat Hartlepool, and a hold in Batley and Spen, with mixed results in the 2021 local elections. After Labour's defeat in the 2019 general election, Starmer was elected to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in April 2020. Starmer advocated a second referendum on Brexit, saying he would have voted to remain. On conclusion of his five-year term as Director of Public Prosecutions, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2014 New Year Honours.Įlected to the House of Commons in the 2015 general election, Starmer became Shadow Minister for Immigration in 2015 before being appointed to the Shadow Cabinet in October 2016 as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union after Britain voted to leave the European Union. In 2008, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), holding these roles until 2013. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Leeds in 1985 and gained a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree at St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford in 1986.Īfter qualifying for the bar, Starmer acted exclusively as a defence lawyer, specialising in human rights issues as a member of Doughty Street Chambers, before being named a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 2002. Starmer was born in London and raised in Surrey, where he attended the selective state Reigate Grammar School, which became an independent school while he was a student.
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Ideologically, Starmer identifies as a socialist and has been described as being on the soft left within the Labour Party.
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He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015. Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KCB QC (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and former lawyer who has served as Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition since 2020.