Red Knight: The Unauthorised Biography of Sir Keir Starmer

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I encourage another reviewer swinging between two possible ratings to balance mine out by going for the higher one. Sir Keir said last year that he had begun penning a book about his life and political vision during the Covid lockdowns. As an academic who worked closely with Sunak in Government, I feel pretty well placed to say that the book just about perfectly got the measure of the man, as a personality, policy-maker and politician.

He advised that police should not even submit a case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unless it met his evidential tests. When cornered by McKinnon’s mother who demanded an explanation and for the DPP to listen to her concern, as a mother, all Starmer could offer in reply was “speaking to you is making me uncomfortable”. The Labour leader said a year ago he was writing a book which his spokesman claimed would be about his “plans for a renewed Britain” and why he believes in the “vital importance of putting integrity back into public life. All of this is explained in great detail and points to Starmer one day being remembered, at best, as an arcane pub quiz answer. He co-founded Doughty Street Chambers in 1990, and conducted cases in a range of international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights.

The 2021 local elections and Hartlepool by-election did not resurrect the Red Wall and only in the Tory-blue South did his party make cosmetic gains. Interesting to me was that Eagleton, although hostile, remains strenuously balanced and forensic - he disagrees with or moderates some of the more aggressive online attack-lines on Starmer (the Saville case is not mentioned, for instance). Why would Starmer campaign so hard against the death penalty in Belize and Uganda, when his clients had been convicted of “shocking crimes”? We do know that Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party on the promise of retaining Corbyn’s manifesto. Biographies must be loaded with fresh knowledge, but perhaps the greatest skill of the author is to convert systematic information into a coherent and engaging story.

The broader political initiative, a billionaire policing the boundaries of working-class authenticity so intensely that nobody without rickets can ever be Labour leader again, is so absurd it’s almost endearing; but it doesn’t provide a very three-dimensional portrait of the man. He is like the not-so-bright person in a meeting, with nothing to contribute, but goes along with whatever anyone else has to say. The second problem is, of course, that very few of Starmer’s friends, colleagues, associates, former teachers or tutors were prepared to be interviewed. HarperCollins has acquired a “fierce” new book by Labour leader Keir Starmer that will see him lay out his vision for Britain.

It was so unusual for Corbyn, one of the few politicians to answer clearly and honestly mosty questions fired by interviewers. They will put forward vague and nice sounding promises drawn from the nattering of focus groups and that will be the extent of it.