There are 12 days to go until the general election and the Labour leader is closing in on power. But who exactly is the man hoping to run Britain?
, who is pushed for time on the campaign trail, a few snapshots to help glimpse the man likely to be PM? Starmer is nodding. He’s keen to be helpful, keen to be a sport, although a little unsure of this magazine profile business and the need to talk about. We are in the green room, all mirrors and concrete, backstage at Labour’s Scottish launch in Inverclyde, and unless I’m mistaken he still has on a layer of foundation. Ready? He folds his arms across his chest. “Yes, by all means.
In the weeks that I tail Starmer – beginning in April, ending in June – I observe him give speeches, meet voters, work sleeves rolled up on the train. I see him make strong use of those frown lines, I see him chuckle, drop the F-bomb, crack jokes about. His suits get sharper; he acquires new specs; more clay is swept through the concrete hair. I notice that when he’s cross, his ears redden. Stressed, he has a face like a slammed front door.
I ask what he gleans from all the political biography he reads, and he says thoughts “about leadership”. Good leadership means consulting with his team, even when he thinks he knows best, and good leadership means the team feel comfortable rebutting his view. “Steph, Tom” – he gestures to his advisers sitting quietly in the room – “can agree or disagree. I’ve said to the staff here many times, and this really matters to me: I want respect, but I don’t want deference.
Of course, the story about Starmer’s father Rodney “the toolmaker” and his “no frills” parenting has been rehearsed. The repeated details about his childhood in a pebbledash semi in Oxted seemed like a forced effort to give his political story shape. But itthe root of his emotional clumsiness, Starmer insists. “The emotional space was quite limited at home … and therefore wasn’t something I was familiar with growing up.
outside our house.” I suspect he was the family’s golden child – his siblings nicknamed him “Superboy” – but he rejects this outright. “I wasn’t the favourite because my mum was quite careful with that. But I did feel slightly separated because the other three went to the comprehensive school and I went to grammar school and the Guildhall School of Music on Saturdays.” One outlet was sport: football three times a week, athletics, rugby, cross-country.
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