Keir Starmer’s authorized profession from preventing McDonalds to locking up terrorists
In the coming weeks voters can expect to hear a lot about Keir Starmer’s work sending dangerous criminals to jail.
The Labour leader will want to make a clear distinction between his own backgrounds and that of his opponent, Rishi Sunak. In a speech on Monday, Mr Starmer said: “I think it is relevant in this election for the voters to know what did the two candidates to be Prime Minister do before they came into politics.
“I was working for the Crown Prosecution Service… trying to protect those who live in the United Kingdom from crime. Rishi Sunak was making money betting against the country in the financial crisis. I think that’s for him to answer.”
He has also spoken of his work ensuring terrorists are locked up as he says he will keep the country safe if he becomes PM.
Early legal career
The future Labour leader qualified as a lawyer in 1987, when he began working as a barrister. In the early part of his career he was heavily focused on human rights law.
In 1990 he started working for Doughty Street Chambers, which specialises in improving access to justice and civil liberties. He worked on death row cases overseas, and campaigned for the end of the death penalty in parts of the Caribbean and Africa.
He has been called to the Bar in the Bahamas, Belize, St Vincent, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, while also working on cases in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Malawi. In January 2001 his work on death row cases saw him pick up the human rights lawyer of the year award at a ceremony organised by Justice and Liberty. He was also named QC of the Year in Human Rights and Public Law in 2007.
McLibel case
One of the most famous moments in Mr Starmer’s legal career was the McLibel case, which saw him help activists Helen Steel and David Morris take on McDonalds.
They had published a leaflet containing a string of allegations about the fast food giant, and were sued for libel. It became one of the longest-running defamation cases in British legal cases.
In 1997 the pair were ordered to pay £40,000 in costs, but the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) later found they hadn’t received a fair trial. Mr Starmer provided free legal support for the pair as the case played out, and represented them at the ECHR.
Ms Steel told Politics Home: “Although we represented ourselves at the original trial, he was giving us advice behind the scenes, drafting pleadings for us, stuff like that. And when we first started, we wouldn’t have been able to get the case off the ground without his help.”
Director of CPS
In 2008, Mr Starmer was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions, which meant he was in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Given his background in human rights law, he was considered a surprise choice, but insiders say he settled into the role.
During the election campaign he will make a lot of his record overseeing the prosecutions of dangerous criminals and terrorists. Among the cases that happened under his watch was the jailing of two of Stephen Lawrence’s killers.
A spokesman for the Labour leader said earlier this year: “He oversaw the first ever prosecution of al-Qaida terrorists, the jailing of the airline liquid bomb plotters and racist murderers of Stephen Lawrence,” they said.
“With his leadership, charge and conviction rates for sexual offences rose, victims were better supported, and the CPS was positively reformed.” He ordered prosecutors in sex crime cases to start from a position of believing victims – which hadn’t always been the case before.
He was knighted in 2014 for his services to criminal justice. The following year he became Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras in North London.
