The U.K. is electing a new prime minister. Leading in the polls is a human rights lawyer and a knight who's rumored to have inspired a character in thewill win Thursday’s parliamentary election by a landslide. He's been a member of parliament since 2015, and leader of the opposition — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's main rival — since 2020.
His election would put Britain on an opposite trajectory from Europe, where there are worries about the rise of the far-right,His parents were “proper old-fashioned socialists” who may have named their son after Keir Hardie, a 19th century Scottish trade unionist, who founded the Labour Party in 1900, says Tom Baldwin,that while his parents admired Hardie and voted Labour, they never explicitly confirmed whom he’s named after, and have since died.
British environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris discuss with their lawyer, Keir Starmer , as they wait for the beginning of their hearing at the European Court for Human Rights on Sept. 7, 2004, in Strasbourg, eastern France.The Labour candidate has acknowledged having a difficult relationship with his late father. “We didn't talk. He never really expressed pride in what I did.
A year later, Starmer won a seat in the U.K. Parliament, representing the Holborn and St. Pancras constituency in north London.A fellow Labour lawmaker recalls Starmer’s first day on the job. She’d heard about his work in human rights and criminal justice, and his knighthood.I actually poked him in the back and said, ‘You’re that Keir Starmer.’ And he said, ‘Yes, I am.