Meet Keir Starmer’s household – from spouse Victoria to toolmaker dad and nurse mum

Keir Starmer could find himself in Downing Street in a few weeks’ time if the Tories continue to tank in the polls.

The Labour leader is facing more scrutiny that ever on his policies and his politics as the General Election race hots up. But voters are increasingly keen to know about who he is as a person and how his past will shape him as a leader.

Mr Starmer has opened up about his mum’s illness and his difficult relationship with his dad, as well as his worries for his children if he becomes Prime Minister. He often speaks about his wife Victoria, who has appeared alongside him at political events. But he’s also fiercely private, particularly when it comes to his son and daughter.

Who were Keir Starmer’s parents?

The Labour leader grew up in a working class family in Oxted, Surrey. His dad Rodney was a toolmaker in a factory and his mum Josephine was a nurse in the NHS. However his mum suffered from Still’s disease, a rare form of arthritis which can destroy the joints.

She spent long periods of time in hospital during Mr Starmer’s young life, with his father at her bedside. She died in 2015, only a few weeks before he became MP for Holborn and St Pancras. In an interview with Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2021, he said: “It was really tragic. She would have loved to have seen that. But she was so ill by then.

“She couldn’t move, she couldn’t use her hands, so she had to be fed. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate. I would have loved her to have been there but she was in a terrible way. In a terrible, terrible place.” Asked what he would have liked to have said to her if he’d had the chance, he said: “I love you.”

Mr Starmer has also spoken movingly about his relationship with his dad Rodney. In speeches, he has often spoken about his dad’s job as a toolmaker and how it gave him “a deep respect for the dignity of work”.

He described his father as “distant” because of the responsibility of caring for his mother – and he regretted not addressing this before his dad’s death in 2018. He told Desert Island Discs in 2020 that he was “determined that my relationship with my own children will be different”.

In a heartbreaking excerpt from a recent biography of the Labour leader by Tom Baldwin, Mr Starmer described finding a scrapbook of cuttings his father kept about his career and realising for the first time that he’d been proud of him.

Mr Starmer also has a sister called Anna went to horticultural college and works in a garden centre, and twins Katy and Nick. He has spoken about Katy, who works as a nurse, and told his biographer that he got into fights when he was young to protect Nick from bullies, who called him “thick” or “stupid” as he suffers from learning difficulties.

Who is his wife Victoria and do they have children?

Keir Starmer married Victoria Alexander in 2007, who he met when they were both lawyers. His wife, who he calls Vic, was unimpressed with him at first, telling a colleague “Who the f*** does he think he is” after a call about a case. Their first date was in the Lord Stanley pub in Camden – branded the least romantic location for a first date by their teenage son, according to Mr Starmer’s biography.

Victoria plans to continue working in occupational health in the NHS if her husband does become PM. Mr Starmer recently said: “She’s absolutely going to carry on working, she wants to and she loves it. It’s also good for me because it gives me an insight into the NHS.”

The Starmers have a son and a daughter but the Labour leader doesn’t name his children in interviews and he never poses for pictures with them. He recently said: “Our boy is in the middle of his GCSEs. At the moment I just want to create the environment where he can get on with what he’s got to get on with as untroubled as he can be.”

Mr Starmer previously told the Table Manners podcast that his children weren’t allowed to eat meat until they turned 10 – and his son now torments him by ordering KFC. The Labour leader became vegetarian 25 years ago but he admitted he has gone back to eating fish. His wife Victoria doesn’t eat meat or fish, so his 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter were given the choice on what they wanted to eat after their 10th birthdays.