The Labour Party leader Keir Starmer.

The Liberal Democrats have just elected a new leader but before that here are my thoughts on the British Labour Party leader.

 

I’m a Liberal, and definitely anti-Socialist, but I do like Keir Starmer. I followed his career from when he was a young civil liberties barrister, as a Professor I worked with at Leeds spoke very highly of him. I think he can do well. My mentor in my first graduate job, at Leeds University, Professor Clive Walker, recommended Starmer as one of his brightest graduates. And I trusted Clive Walker’s judgment greatly. (From 1992 onwards). Clive thought Keir would go far.

The new Labour Leader Keir Starmer. I think he is very competent and can win – ironically he is a socialist from an ordinary background but because he is posh sounding and not far Left the Left are very hostile to him. Starmer. I always thought he was from the North East of Scottish background because he is named after the founding Labour MP Keir Hardie. In fact I was always wrong as Starmer was born in London. A leading civil liberties barrister of his generation I thought it was a brilliant move of the Labour Government in  2008 to appoint him Director of Public Prosecutions, head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as an expert civil liberties barrister would have a good idea what needed reforming or could be done better.

Based on social media posts, 7, 13 April 2020.

PS I’ve also spelt his first name wrong all these years, though hopefully not in my second major academic article, on breach of the peace and protest, with then Dr. Donald Nicolson, which analysed a case that Starmer and others took to the European Court of Human Rights and kindly sent me the papers in.