I was on a night train speeding to Kyiv when Argentina ended England’s dreams of World Cup glory.
Keir Starmer was glued to the screen in his carriage at the end, facilitated with some tech wizardry by the Ukrainians to allow the football-mad PM to watch the semi-finals. President Volodymyr Zelensky had loaned the Prime Minister his official train to make the long journey, in a sign of their friendship.
As they met outside the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Zelensky clasped his arm and said “once more” as they held their final meeting. Starmer chose to go to Ukraine as his swansong, to mark one of his proudest achievements in office.
The warmth that is felt for him in Ukraine is clear. As we left Kyiv to make the long journey home, the Ukrainians changed the platform board to name our train “Bravery Express”. But he also wanted to reassure the Ukrainians that the UK, under his successor Andy Burnham, would remain a steadfast ally.
Starmer will be replaced by Burnham as Labour leader on Friday and as PM on Monday, after a turbulent two years in office. But when he sat down with me to do his final newspaper interview as PM, he appeared to have accepted his fate with good grace.
It’s an interview I know he never wanted to give. He had set his sights on a 10-year project to reshape Britain. But as Boris Johnson said as he resigned: “When the herd moves, it moves”.
The herd moved against Starmer after a dire set of local election results torched any hope he had of moving on from a string of missteps and U-turns. The deep-rooted problems that he struggled to fix quickly enough for voters are Burnham’s to grapple with now.
I remember doing Starmer’s first interview of the general election campaign in 2024 for the Mirror, where he was fizzing with energy for the fight, and reckoning for the first time with the prospect of winning. As we sat in the stands of a football pitch in Kyiv to do his last newspaper interview as PM, he was more candid than I have ever known him to be about the challenges of office, and the toll it has taken on his family.
Despite being ousted from power, he had no snide words for his colleagues, and said Labour could win the next election – even if he’s not the man to lead them to it. He really does love football. He interrupted an answer to cheer loudly when the Ukrainian veterans scored a belter of a goal – and I had to remind him that we were on the clock.
In his final weeks, he has turned his attention to shaping his legacy on the world stage, with our trip to Ukraine and a visit to France to see close ally Emmanuel Macron. And at home, he used his last days in office to push through the long-promised Hillsborough Law, to prevent state cover-ups
I was struck when I attended a Downing Street reception this week by the fact he had chosen to fill the garden with people who have battled injustice – instead of politicians.
The Hillsborough Families, Pooja Kanda, who campaigned against knife crime in memory of her son Ronan, Figen Murray, whose son Martyn Hett was killed in Manchester Arena bombing. He was never a traditional politician, who enjoyed the cut and thrust of Westminster.
Even those close to him admit he was uninterested in politics, which meant it tripped him up time and again. But as he carves out his legacy in these final days, he will be hoping that history remembers him more kindly.