On the Hill ran a open, frank and revealing cover story on our new MP, Keir Starmer in October 2015 after he was elected as our local MP. 

David Lennon who interviewed him for the cover story believes it still provides many answers to the key question about our new Prime Minister:  “Who is Keir Starmer?” 

At eight o’clock on a Monday morning, you can find our local Member of Parliament helping to run a football game at the neighbourhood school in Kentish Town where his seven-year-old son is a pupil. “My job is keeping the peace and ensuring that the scores are fairly even,” says Keir Starmer KCB, QC, MP with a broad smile.

The famous battling human rights lawyer and previous Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (2008 to 2013) loves football and Beethoven, cooks a little and dislikes being called Sir Keir, despite having accepted the knighthood in the 2014 New Year Honours for “services to law and criminal justice”.

Keir Starmer was elected as Labour Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras in the General Election in May 2015, replacing the venerable and much-loved Frank Dobson who retired after 30 years on the job.

The 53-year-old father of two is no big name parachuted into the constituency by the party. “I have lived in Kentish Town for 15 years and worked in Holborn for 25 years. My wife grew up in Gospel Oak, where her mum was the community doctor. Our children go to our local state primary school, where my wife is a governor,” he states proudly on his website.

“Kentish Town is fantastic”, he tells me. “It still has a proper High Street where you can find lots of individual shops, and not just chain stores. Also, it has brilliant schools and we have lots of family and friends nearby.”

In fact, Keir took his now-wife Vic, a solicitor whom he met while on a case, on their first date to the Lord Stanley pub off Camden Road. “My son says I should have taken her for a nice meal,” he says with a big grin.

Despite his intimidating CV, distinguished career and grand title, our very fit-looking MP comes across as approachable and relaxed when we sit down for a mug of tea in the ground floor atrium of Portcullis House, the parliamentarians’ offices across the road from the House of Commons.

Why politics? Well, it was probably inevitable. “My dad was a toolmaker before he retired, so he worked in a factory all his life. My mum, who died just three weeks before the election, had been a nurse before becoming physically disabled. We didn’t have much money and they were Labour-leaning parents. That created an atmosphere where my thinking developed, so my roots are firmly in the social justice area.”

Plus, he is named Keir after the pioneering socialist and Labour party founder, Keir Hardie. He is very fond of the name now, but that was not always the case. “When I was at school, at about 13, I thought, why couldn’t they have called me Dave or Pete? At that age you don’t want to be different, do you?”

Why did he originally decide to stand for parliament? “I saw the damage caused by the 30 per cent cuts in the public services I ran, as a result of the government’s policies. I felt they were undermining the post-war consensus on how we operate a modern democracy. I thought that the 2015 election would be defining,” he said with strong conviction.

Things did not work out as he had hoped, but he stresses that “we must now look forward to redefining the purpose of the Labour party in the 21st century. We should focus on the years ahead and ask ourselves what are the challenges now.”

Labour politics are so fascinating at the moment that I had to stop myself continuing down that route, as our editor’s brief was to find out more about the man.

Keir Starmer’s hobby, nay passion, is football. “I played football twice a week since I was 10, almost religiously.” He plays eight-a-side football with “friends and friends of friends” twice a week at Talacre between Gospel Oak and Kentish Town. “It’s fun and no one really gives a stuff.”

He plays “in the middle, midfield”. Our MP laughs when I ask if this reflects his political position too. Do you teach your boy how to play? He is even more animated telling me that there is nothing worse than parents urging on their child from the side lines. But he does take his lad to see his beloved Arsenal, where he is a season ticket holder.

After finishing as DPP he had more time to take his children to school. But a career in Parliament is making it more difficult to spend time with the children, and he confesses he does not often read them bedtime stories. “It’s a struggle to see a lot of them during the week.”

He was once quoted as saying that caring for children is harder than even his toughest legal battles. “Yes, it’s true, especially my very strong-willed daughter who makes it her business to contradict everything her parents say,” Keir says with a mixture of frustration and pride.

He was the only one of four siblings, two sisters and a brother, to get to university. “It was a classic case of having real opportunity provided by the welfare state – the provision of decent education opportunities, being able to go to university.”

After studying law at Leeds and Oxford, in 1990 he co-founded Doughty Street Chambers with radical lawyers such as Helena Kennedy QC, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Edward Fitzgerald QC. “Our founding principles were the protection of human rights, internationalism, and a commitment to represent those least able to represent themselves.”

I read somewhere that you like cooking, I say, so do you have a favourite recipe or dish? He looks surprised and then without hesitation says “Tomato pasta with green vegetables, chilli and garlic”.

Time is running out so I ask if he has any other passions. “Music, classical music. I was a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music till 18. I played the flute, piano, recorder and violin. Then I realised at the age of 17-18 that the other people at the Guildhall were hugely talented, whereas I just practised hard.”

His favourite music? “Beethoven piano sonatas,” he pauses, “actually all things Beethoven.” And his favourite musician? “Barenboim”.  He can be a difficult person, I say. “Yes, but like talented footballers, you accept this.”

Despite all the years so far in opposition, Keir is still hugely enthusiastic about being our MP. “There is so much constituency work, housing, hospitals. My surgery is supposed to be two hours, but is often four or five because there is so much to do.”