Tom Baldwin's biography of Sir Keir Starmer shows that the Prime Minister has the leadership ability to implement his left-wing agenda leading to further restrictions on Christian freedom of expression.
Keir Starmer, The Biography reveals a leader with the capacity for the intellectual hard work required to master the details of government and the moral ability to inspire trust in his followers.
Very arguably, the last Prime Minister to combine those two qualities was Margaret Thatcher until around 1989 when she started to alienate too many of her former followers among Conservative ministers and MPs.
One anecdote from the biography by the Labour Party's former communications director who has been a senior journalist on The Sunday Telegraph and The Times stands out as an example of Starmer's leadership ability. Baldwin records testimony from Starmer's barrister colleague, Gavin Millar, who shared an office with him when they were tenants in the leftist Doughty Street Chambers in London in the 1990s.
Millar recalled an occasion when Starmer was chairman of the chambers' management committee and was being deluged with complaints from lefty lawyers about the "nasty red" chairs and the cheap desks in their offices.
Starmer sent a message to the entire chambers: "I would remind you all that we are human rights lawyers. We're here to defend the rights of vulnerable people to (the) best of our ability. We're not here to be concerned about the colour of chairs."
Millar said he heard no more complaints after that. This may seem a trivial incident but what Starmer said then and the way he said it are the unmistakable marks of a leader.
As a former vicar, I know how easily a trivial matter, such as the colour of the carpet in the church building, can obsess a group and spread like a virus. Good leadership as Starmer displayed on this occasion can save a peer group from itself and keep the organisation focussed on its central aim.
Baldwin describes another example of Starmer's leadership ability in self-discipline under pressure at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool in October 2023: "As he began his leader's speech to a hall packed with almost three thousand people, a man climbed on to the stage, emptied a bag of glitter over him and shouted something about 'a people's house', before being dragged away."
Baldwin observed that people watching the news that night would have seen how "the Labour leader stood his ground, locked his hand unyieldingly on that of the protester and stared straight ahead".
Based on the evidence in Baldwin's book, published shortly before Labour won its massive General Election victory on July 4, I would suggest that in Keir Starmer the country has a real leader with the capacity to lead it in the direction he believes in. If he succeeds, I believe he would lead the country in the wrong direction from a Christian perspective.
In his article for The Spectator in July, 'Does Keir Starmer's atheism matter?', former Catholic Herald editor Dan Hitchens described Starmer's reaction to churches that uphold the traditional Christian teaching on marriage and sexual ethics:
"Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped, Sir Keir Starmer stands alongside Pastor Agu Irukwu. The pastor opens his arms to invoke Almighty God.
"We hear Starmer in voiceover: 'From rolling out the vaccine to running the local food bank, Jesus House, like many other churches across the UK, has played a crucial role in meeting the needs of the community.' A nice video tribute for Easter, this. Good to see churches getting some recognition. A sign, perhaps, of the inclusive national unity a Labour government would foster.
"By Easter Monday, Starmer has apologised, deleted the video and more or less vowed never again to darken the door of Pastor Irukwu, who, it has emerged, is an opponent of same-sex marriage. Whoops. Sorry. Didn't realise it was that kind of church."
According to Hitchens, Starmer said: "It was a mistake and I accept that."
The Starmer government's neo-Marxist assault on free speech flagged up when within weeks of getting elected when it put on hold the Conservatives' Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. This bodes ill for orthodox Christians. But if the Prime Minister ever thinks back to Communist Eastern Europe as a young socialist in the 1980s, he might remember that Christianity has a tendency to triumph over Marxism.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
