A landslide victory by the Labour Party in the U.K. has put the left-center group back in control of the government for the first time in 14 years.
Keir Starmer, the party's leader — and as of Friday, the U.K.'s new prime minister — is a voice of moderation within the traditionally leftist party.
Starmer, 61, is viewed by some as a much-needed step toward the center of the political spectrum, necessary to win back the hearts of the U.K. electorate. For others, and especially to the party's most left-leaning figures, Starmer's concessions are pulling the party too far from the banners of social justice it has traditionally represented.
British stocks and ETFs experienced a slight uptick after the results of the election were announced.
Who Is Keir Starmer And How Did He Rise To Power?
Starmer's early years crystallized the leader as a poster child for Labour values.
The son of a nurse who worked for the NHS, the U.K.'s public health service, and a toolmaker, Starmer was the first in his family to reach a college title, graduating from the University of Oxford with a law degree.
Throughout his political career, Starmer has repeatedly made mention of his working class background as a way to legitimize his quest for social justice.
During his formative years, which coincided with the final years of the Cold War, he displayed clear tendencies toward the far left, serving as editor for Socialist Alternatives, a Trotskyist radical magazine in the U.K.
Starmer became a lawyer in 1987 and began a career "defending ordinary people against the powerful," as the official Labour Party site states in his biography.
This meant representing labor unions against corporations and working on high-profile human rights cases, which included defending convicts sentenced for death penalty.
In 2008, he was appointed director of public prosecutions by the Crown, launching his public servant career. This position is the third most senior public prosecutor position in England and Wales, behind only the attorney general and solicitor general.
During seven years in this position he enjoyed public exposure, becoming the main prosecutor in high-profile cases which included the trials of several MPs found guilty in a parliamentary expenses scandal.
He was knighted for his contributions to law and order in 2014.
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His political career is short-lived, compared to other MPs. He was appointed as a candidate for Parliament in late 2014, less than 10 years ago. In 2015 he became a member of the House of Commons for Labour.
He was named Shadow Brexit Minister, a position within the opposition that centralized his party's opinions on Brexit, one of the most cataclysmic events in recent U.K. history.
Jump to 2020, and Starmer had risen to opposition leader within the Labour Party, after previous leader Jeremy Corbyn lost by a landslide against Conservative Boris Johnson in the 2019 elections.
What Does Keir Starmer Stand For?
At 61 years old, Starmer seems to have pulled away from his Marxist background for more moderate centrist position that seeks to bring back credibility to the Labour Party.
His calm, managerial and unassuming public personality has been deemed "boring," yet it might be exactly the face that the U.K. government needs today to counteract a credibility crisis that has taken it to the lowest approval levels in decades. Only 27% of the population said they trusted the government in March, as per the Office for National Statistics.
"A vote for Labour is a vote for stability — economic and political," Starmer said during his most recent campaign.
Over the five years that went by since Labour's dramatic loss to the Conservatives in 2019, Starmer has worked to weed out the far-left elements of his party. A symbolic step in this direction occurred in 2020 when former leader Corbyn was ousted following his reaction to claims of antisemitism within the party.
Corbyn won a seat in the Parliament as an independent in this year's election. But his expulsion from the party also meant a break with some of his most leftist policies.
Starmer's concessions toward a more moderate stance — which arguably got him elected — include dialing back on Labour's most extreme proposals, like increasing the income tax or dropping university tuition fees, as The Guardian has reported. Several plans to nationalize public services have also been taken out of the Labour conversation.
Starmer's main quest is one of consensus and order. He said during his campaign he won't commit to promises that he can't fulfill, putting the focus on fixing the country's housing crisis and its decaying public health system. This is a challenging task, as the new MP has vowed not to increase taxes for the general population or deepen public debt.
UK-US Relations Under Starmer: Politically, Starmer's government is more aligned with U.S. Democrats. This means that the future of international relations across the Atlantic depends widely on the results of November's election in the U.S.
If Joe Biden — or another Democratic candidate — were to win, that would likely bring about a brighter future for U.K.-U.S. relations than if Donald Trump is elected president.
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Picture: Official portrait of Keir Starmer, taken in June 2017, via Wikimedia Commons.
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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