Keir

A cheap trick of opinion pollsters is to ask focus groups of voters to guess the favourite drink of a political leader. In the case of Sir Keir Starmer, respondents sometimes wrongly assume that his tipple has to be a gin and tonic when he is actually far more fond of a pint of real ale. Some voters are even under the misapprehension that his background is so posh that the knighthood is hereditary.As Tom Baldwin points out in this highly informative, illuminating and insightful biography, this is one of the many paradoxes…

Keir Starmer can be a hard man to read. Even now, focus groups complain that they’re not quite sure what he stands for – though he has come off the fence on enough divisive issues now, from Gaza to imposing VAT on private school fees, to give them a pretty clear idea. Still, some quality about him seems oddly elusive. The backstory we will all hear endlessly in the run-up to the election – that his father was a rather emotionally distant toolmaker with whom he had a difficult relationship, his mother a nurse who suffered…