Do we like Keir Starmer?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real good (a legal career in public service, Palestine recognition, a conversion-practices ban pledge) sits against his shift on trans rights and the Mandelson appointment.
Starmer was born in south London in 1962 and grew up in a village near Oxted in Surrey. He went to Reigate Grammar, studied law at Leeds, and was called to the bar in 1987. He became a QC in 2002, then Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 for a five-year term, and was knighted in 2014.
The end came fast. Labour sank in the polls after its 2024 landslide, Andy Burnham won a by-election, and Starmer said on 22 June 2026 the party was asking whether he was best placed to lead it into the next election. He accepted the answer “with good grace”. Donald Trump also posted that Starmer “failed badly on two very important subjects”, immigration and energy.
The big stain is Peter Mandelson. Mandelson was named ambassador to Washington in 2025 after security vetting reportedly ruled him a risk, and the Foreign Office overruled it. Opponents accused Starmer of misleading Parliament by saying due process was followed. He called the Tory motion a “stunt”, denied anyone in his office pressured officials, and MPs voted 335 to 223 against sending him to the Privileges Committee. His chief of staff admitted a “serious mistake” and the whole saga fed the revolt against him.
On the harm check, the trans record is the problem. In 2020 he backed self-identification, but by 2023 Labour had ruled it out, and in 2025 he welcomed the Supreme Court sex ruling, saying a woman is an adult female. LGBTQ+ outlets like PinkNews accuse him of turning his back on the community. In his favour, Labour has pledged a trans-inclusive conversion practices ban, though the bill has still to land.
On migration, he warned in 2025 that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”. Critics, including Labour MPs, said it echoed Enoch Powell, and he later said he deeply regretted it. On welfare, his government planned to tighten disability and sickness benefits, then watered the plan down to new applicants only after a big Labour rebellion.
Some of it is real good. He recognised a Palestinian state in September 2025 and said it restarted hope for a two-state solution, which drew a standing ovation from most of the hall and anger from parts of the Jewish community. Full Fact also caught him on a few PMQs claims, including teacher numbers and the size of the defence spending boost. It didn't find anything on the scale of a pattern of invented claims, but he did get things wrong.