‘I’m not working class any extra’: Sir Keir Starmer admits
Sir Keir Starmer has said he no longer belongs to a class despite being a wealthy former barrister who owns a £2m house.
The Prime Minister has spoken at length about his working class roots but said he would no longer ascribe a class to himself.
Reflecting on his Labour conference speech in which he talked about his background, LBC’s Nick Ferrari asked him what class he belonged to now.
‘Well, my roots are working class,’ he said. ‘But Nick, I accept, if this is what you’re putting to me, that I’ve been able to take advantage of huge opportunities in my life.
‘I’m now Prime Minister of this country. I don’t ascribe a class to me.’
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to LBC’s Nick Ferrari during the Labour Party Conference
Sir Keir said he no longer belongs to a class despite being a wealthy former barrister who owns a £2m house
He added: ‘The example I gave in my speech was, and this is the story we do tell, of people from a working class background like mine and plenty of other examples who have come through the class ceiling if you like, because of the opportunities that they have had.’
He said these stories needed to be told because they were ‘aspirational’ and while not all children would smash through the class ceiling, they all deserved the opportunity to.
Sir Keir has spoken at length about his working class roots and always been at pains to play down his privilege.
The son of a toolmaker and nurse, he grew up in a pebble-dashed semi in rural Surrey and attended a leading grammar school that later went private, though his fees were covered by the council.
He attended a private music school before becoming the first in his family to go to university, reading law at Leeds and then Oxford.
He then became a human rights barrister, before becoming the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Prime Minister attended a private music school before becoming the first in his family to go to university, reading law at Leeds and then Oxford
His 20 years as a lawyer before his move into politics has put him comfortably into the country’s top 1 per cent of earners.
His property dealings and gold-plated pension pot alone place his worth at around £3 million and the Mail this week revealed he recently paid off the mortgage on his four-bed north London townhouse, worth £2m.
The 62-year-old is also entitled to two annual salaries – one as a constituency MP and one as PM – totalling £166,786.
Before entering politics, Sir Keir earned £1 million as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) between 2008 and 2013.
He also amassed a £700,000 pension which – on top of his MP’s retirement allowance – is expected to give him a publicly funded pot worth about £1
