BRIGHTON: Keir Starmer, the sober-minded leader of Britain's Labour party, broke down in tears in a TV interview as he described the agonising death of his mother and a troubled relationship with his father.
Starmer has been striving to rebuild the centre-left opposition party after a shattering election loss to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives in 2019.
On Wednesday, he gets his first chance to address Labour members in person at their annual conference, after last year's was held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For many Labour critics, Starmer's apparent lack of passion is a problem, and he has struggled to connect with voters during successive pandemic lockdowns.
He has been urged to display more of the emotion he showed when recalling his parents in the June interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan.
But he denies being a soulless robot. "There is a huge passion," he told Morgan, "but passion comes in different shapes and sizes".
Football fan
The interview offered other insights into Starmer's downtime away from politics as the married father-of-two opened up to millions of viewers.
Friends with fellow human rights lawyer Amal Clooney from their time together at the same legal practice, Starmer described a day-long drinking session with her husband, the Hollywood star George Clooney.
Serious and determined, the 59-year-old Arsenal football club season ticket holder took over from the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn in the wake of Labour's worst general election loss since the 1930s.
He vowed to unite the party and get it back on a path to power after it was riven by huge divisions over Brexit, Corbyn's hard-left agenda and instances of anti-Semitism.
In a 35-page essay previewing his conference speech, Starmer sought to make a virtue of his earnest leadership style in contrast to Johnson's florid ebullience.
"It is a tragedy that we have a prime minister and a government so utterly unserious and completely unprepared for the great challenges of our time," Starmer wrote.
"I want Labour to once again be Britain's bricks and mortar -- a symbol of solidity, reliability, shelter and the prospect of building something new and better."
But the party has continued to suffer reverses at the ballot box, in individual by-elections and at local elections in May, as Johnson pushes the Conservatives deeper into former Labour strongholds.
Defending the powerless
Starmer was born in London, one of four siblings, to a toolmaker father and a nurse mother, both of whom were animal lovers who rescued donkeys.
"Whenever one of us left home, they replaced us with a donkey," he joked.
His unusual first name was his socialist parents' tribute to Labour's founding father, Keir Hardie.
At school near London, he had violin lessons with Norman Cook, the former Housemartins bassist who became DJ Fatboy Slim.
After legal studies at the universities of Leeds and Oxford, Starmer turned his attention to radical causes, defending trades unions and anti-McDonald's activists.
In 2003, he began his move to the establishment with a job ensuring police in Northern Ireland complied with human rights legislation.
Five years later, he was appointed director of public prosecutions for England and Wales by the then Labour government.
Between 2008 and 2013, he oversaw the prosecution of MPs for abusing their expenses, journalists for phone-hacking, and young rioters involved in 2011 unrest across England.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and in 2015, was elected as a member of parliament, representing a seat in left-leaning north London.
Just weeks before he was elected, his mother died of a rare disease of the joints. Starmer told Morgan that her death "broke" his father, whom he described as emotionally distant.
In 2016, Starmer joined a rebellion by Labour MPs over Corbyn's perceived lack of leadership during the referendum campaign.
It failed, and later that year he rejoined the top team as Labour's Brexit spokesman, where he remained until succeeding Corbyn in April 2020.
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