The ruthless rise of Keir Starmer: from ‘stone cold loser’ to British prime minister

Cautious, meticulous, focused: the new British PM has a staid image but he is also a man who used to dress in ‘dead man’s coats’, wears Donegal GAA jerseys and used to advocate a united Ireland

Starmer gives speech as Labour win UK election

Kim Bielenberg

Back in 2020, when Keir Starmer put his hat in the ring to be the leader of the British Labour Party, The Sun dismissed him as a likely “stone cold loser”. Not for the first or last time, he had been underestimated.

The newspaper described the MP as a “multimillionaire” human rights lawyer “now posing as a working-class boy”.