An exclusive interview with Keir Starmer
Good morning. This is Tom McTague, editor in chief of the New Statesman.
To many, Keir Starmer remains something of an enigma: a cautious, controlled and even contrived figure seen by the right as a secret radical and on the left as a conservative sell-out trying to defeat Nigel Farage by stealing his clothes. But who is the real Starmer and what does he want to do in power? That is what I set out to discover as I went on the road with this most normal and abnormal of prime ministers over the past few weeks, meeting him on land, air and sea to discover what lies beneath. I discovered a man struggling to articulate his deepest emotions — and those of the country he leads.
“The manager”
Every prime minister approaches the job in their own way, shaped by their own particular foibles. Many of the most able and hard-working in recent years have become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task in front of them, morphing into caricatures of their own worst selves in the process. Theresa May and Rishi Sunak suffered this fate. Others were preternaturally unsuited to the responsibilities of high office: Liz Truss. Starmer does not sit in either of these camps. Not yet at least.
He looks comfortable with power, easy with its responsibilities. Those closest to him say he sleeps well. Football and family help. Old friends visit him in his flat in Downing Street to watch his team, Arsenal. A rowing machine keeps him active. Evening television with his wife and children provides comic relief: Friday Night Dinner has Starmer and his children roaring with laughter; the scenes of middle-class Jewish life, all too familiar for his wife and children, who are being raised in the traditions of his wife’s family faith.
Of the prime ministers I have seen up close, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson all looked similarly comfortable with the pressure. Yet Starmer is qualitatively different from each of them. He does not carry the missionary conviction of Blair or the patrician authority of Cameron. The mocking nihilism of Johnson is about as far from Starmerite earnestness as is possible to imagine. Starmer is something else: a manager.
Where Blair, Cameron and Johnson looked up and out towards history and the role they believed they were destined to play, Starmer’s gaze travels down: to the land below; into the family bonds and households of the people he governs, their small prides and dignities, hopes and fears. Starmer is drawn to the particular over the general, the practical over the idealistic. He is the director-general of the United Kingdom, permanent secretary of the British state, manager of the decaying post-Blairite order. The question that begins to worm into my thoughts as I watch him is whether he will be its last.
Have a good week, and see you on Saturday. Thank you.
Where is the interview here?
Keir Starmer is not a total enigma, he is a blatantly total cunt and genocidaire who needs to be stopped NOW. Stop empowering mass murderous scum and do some communist reporting ffs.