Nick Starmer, 60, who had learning disabilities after suffering complications during birth, passed away 18 months after being diagnosed with terminal cancer on Boxing Day 2024
Keir Starmer speaks about his late brother with Pete Wicks
Keir Starmer has opened up about grief and being by his younger brother Nick’s side as he was given a terminal cancer diagnosis.
In an emotional interview with reality TV star Pete Wicks for his Man Made podcast, the Prime Minister said his late brother was “very vulnerable” and didn’t want him to learn about a lung cancer diagnosis on his own. Nick Starmer, who had learning disabilities after suffering complications during birth, passed away 18 months later on Boxing Day 2024 at the age of 60.
Mr Starmer told Wicks: “I didn’t know how he would react. So, I insisted on going to the hospital with him to be with him and basically watched his face as he was told that he had terminal cancer and then went back home with him to try to talk through with him what I thought that meant, to make sure he properly understood and what the implications of that were going to be in terms of how it would impact on his life.”
Speaking on the podcast during Men’s Mental Health Month, the PM said he had already been secretly visiting his brother in Leeds hospital “for weeks and weeks”.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer joins Pete Wicks’ Man Made podcast and shares emotional admissionREAD MORE: Keir Starmer’s heartbreak as brother Nick dies from cancer as PM says ‘we’ll miss him’
He said: “The hospital had really kindly got me up through back chutes and lifts and staircases into intensive care, where I sort of popped out of an odd door, spent time with my brother, went back out to the hospital. Nobody knew I’d been there. And I decided when he got cancer that I would protect him above all else.
“This is the hardest thing of my job, was when something intensely personal happens and you just need a space. Particularly with grief, in my view. And yet there isn’t really the space. And it’s quite difficult. Very difficult, intensely difficult.”
Asked what made Nick a “good man”, Mr Starmer said: “An incredible kindness and a willingness to do anything for other people.
“So notwithstanding that he didn’t have, he never had any money apart from, after my mum and dad passed, when he did inherit some money from them, he basically didn’t have two pennies to rub together. And the clothes he had with the clothes he stood in. But nonetheless, if you asked him to help, wanted a favour, he’d be the first to say I’ll do it. Whether he had the means to do it or not.
“And so there was a sort of kindness, and this is an understated characteristic in men I think, because often when people are asked, you know, what is a man? What’s masculinity? They will always go to the strengths, or the sport or the success or whatever it may be, a very traditional stereotype to my view. Strength through kindness is something very powerful that I don’t think we talk about enough.”
During the interview Mr Starmer also talked about a homophobic attack his niece suffered in 2022, which has previously been detailed by his biographer, Tom Baldwin. He told Wicks: “I was furious. Really, really angry. Still am telling you about it, the idea that blokes would beat a woman up for holding the hand of her wife.
“Now and this goes to something I’m really worried about in this country, which is, a political question above all else, which is I worry that we’re becoming a country of toxic division. Or at least that’s where some people want to take us.”
The PM was also pressed on the biggest challenges facing young men in Britain. He said it would be “probably the difficult search for a role model” for teenage boys.
Mr Starmer added: “I think for many years, there was a traditional role model, certainly when I was growing up with my dad… that’s broken down, rightly in my view. But it does mean, to answer your question for young men now there is this question of what is the role model? What is my purpose? I think it’s quite a difficult one.
“People like Andrew Tate and that sort of person become quite attractive to young men because they search for a role and, on one level, that gives them a sense of being successful, being rich, etc. and famous.
“On the other hand, it comes with a whole baggage of misogyny, and toxic division that goes with it and sort of steering young men away from that path to a different path is quite tricky. To give young men a sense of worth is really hard.”