When a young Keir Starmer turned up to the interview for his first job as a barrister wearing a cardigan, senior counsel had to be persuaded to take him on.
“Keir interviewed badly. He lacked confidence and dress sense and looked about 14,” said Geoffrey Robertson KC, the founder of Doughty Street Chambers, who recruited Starmer. “But he turned out, as could be predicted from his written work, to be brilliant — my new secret weapon.”
The prospective UK prime minister has since had to constantly remould himself to match his ambitions. Dubbed a “lefty lawyer” by rivals, Starmer, 61, made his name as a top human rights barrister in the 1990s at Doughty Street, taking on high profile cases from the “McLibel” lawsuit — acting for environmental activists against McDonald’s — to human rights abuses in Northern Ireland, and a colourful druid called King Arthur Pendragon.
Unlike more mainstream criminal barristers, Starmer focused on courting judges rather than juries, obtaining important judgments at the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg and appealing death penalty cases in Africa and the Caribbean. With his quiet persuasiveness and command of the facts, Starmer’s legal career — which included being the UK’s director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013 — clearly laid the groundwork for his life in politics, according to people that worked with him.
“I think he practises politics exactly the way he practises the law,” said Lord Ken Macdonald KC, Starmer’s predecessor as DPP. “There would be no fireworks, but he won a high proportion of his cases because he completely mastered the material.”
In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Starmer said that a ruling on the death penalty in Uganda in 2005 was his proudest achievement as a lawyer.
“When we finally won a judgment in Uganda which saved the lives of over 400 people in one go who had been on death row . . . that was quite an extraordinary moment,” Starmer said. “Many of them had never been legally represented, many of them had been on death row for over a decade, and a significant number were under 18.”
In 2008, Starmer moved on to his next act as DPP at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for England and Wales, a role he often refers to on the campaign trail. Where many new senior officials would look to set out a grand plan, one of Starmer’s key missions at the organisation was to create an unglamorous list of core standards for prosecutions, which would be used to assess the thousands of cases the prosecuting body brought each year.
“He thinks process matters and he thinks it’s important to be able to influence processes and how they work,” said Macdonald.
The job revealed a more ruthless side of Starmer, according to people who know him, as well as give him experience as a top public official working alongside the political agenda of the day.
The role also highlighted Starmer’s attention to detail. Where Macdonald had visited every CPS office in the country at least once in his tenure, Starmer tried to visit them at least once a year, according to one person who worked with him at the CPS, though the geographical spread of the organisation changed during Starmer’s term.
In a bid to connect with colleagues, which became even more important when he was forced to cut the CPS budget by more than 25 per cent from 2010, he wrote a regular blog with details about his family and life outside of work. His bid for collegiality, however, did not prevent him from showing his displeasure if staff were not across their brief.
“At your peril if you think that he is not going to be over the detail because he will take you to the cleaners,” said one former CPS colleague.
However, they added he did not take criticism well: “If he was criticised as DPP it hurt him. For a man who was quite concerned about that to go into politics, it was weird.”
While Starmer enjoyed a relatively low crime period during his tenure, it was not without drama.
He faced uproar from politicians and celebrities over the CPS’ decision to prosecute the “Twitter joke” case, which centred on a young man who had jokingly tweeted that he would bomb the airport near Doncaster after it closed due to snow. The case is a demonstration of Starmer prioritising legal precedent over human cost, according to one person who knows him.
He also faced criticism for his handling of the 2011 riots spurred by the death of Mark Duggan, a Black man shot dead by the police, that led to thousands of arrests and prosecutions.
“I don’t apologise for being robust in response to crime,” Starmer said in a recent interview with Channel 4.
A spokesperson for Starmer did not reply to a request for comment on criticisms of his handling of cases as DPP.
Politically sensitive cases including the MPs expenses scandal, which saw him bring charges against both Labour and Tory politicians, the prosecution of Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne over lying about speeding points, and the News of the World phone hacking probe, also drew unflattering commentary, while rivals have tried to lay responsibility at his door for the CPS’ failure to prosecute serial sex abuser Jimmy Savile.
Starmer commissioned an independent report into the Savile failure in 2012, though the CPS has said that Starmer had no involvement in the decision not to proceed with a case.
Still, even those he has been in opposition to acknowledge his success as DPP, particularly in light of the budget cuts.
“I always found him extraordinarily rational,” said Dominic Grieve, who served as Conservative attorney-general for the second half of Starmer’s tenure. “He succeeded in doing it [making budget cuts] without compromising the efficiency of the CPS.”
The criticisms primed him for politics. In 2014, the same year he received a knighthood for services to criminal justice and around nine months after he stepped down as DPP, Starmer said that he would seek selection as a Labour MP for Holborn & St Pancras.
“Keir Starmer does not have the charisma of Tony Blair or Boris Johnson, but charisma in a politician is no longer regarded as a good thing,” said Robertson. “His early career offers a clue to the fact that he has a few qualities associated with that great liberal reformer William Gladstone. That idea should terrify the Tories. Gladstone won office four times and ruled for 13 years.”
