SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2020
Leicester City and England star Jamie Vardy is 33. He has a reported net worth of £9.5million. R&B singer Mary J Blige is 49. She began singing in a church choir. Countdown’s Rachel Riley is 34. She studied maths at Oxford. Former miners’ leader Arthur Scargill is 82. And many happy returns to Mirror readers Stuart King from Ipswich, 35, and Jamie Andrews from Leigh, Gtr Manchester, 21, today.
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KEIR Starmer’s seriousness has led some to question if he has the passion to lead the Labour party.
He is intensely private and does not talk much about why he first got involved with politics.
But in his first interview since declaring his bid for the leadership, he reveals a “burning desire” to tackle inequalities and protect public services
There is a very personal reason behind his commitment to defending the NHS – and one he doesn’t find easy to share.
“Let me tell you this in the best way I can,” he says. “My mum contracted Stills disease when she was 11. It’s when your immune system turns on itself.
“She was told she wouldn’t be able to walk when she was in her 20s.
“She was the longest patient on steroids in the history of Britain.
“It allowed her to walk in her 20s and 30s. It took a terrible toll on her.
“I spent a lot of my time in highdependency units with my mum watching nurses saving her life.
“I saw that as a child, I saw it as a teenager. It is very, very personal.”
His eyes well up as he tells how his mother, who died five years ago, had her leg amputated and ended up unable to walk, sleep, eat or talk. She was never able to speak to his two children.
DETERMINED
He says: “I don’t need much persuading in terms of the importance of the NHS.”
But he worries about the impact of Tory efforts to get a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, saying: “Every deal America does involves public services being on the table.”
Mr Starmer, 57, is aware of how big the task ahead will be but is determined to turn around his party’s fortunes.
On the eve of his formal campaign launch in Manchester he says: “I’ve been involved all my life in fighting injustice and in particular fighting the powerful on behalf of the powerless.”
Before entering Parliament in 2015 he was a successful human rights lawyer who tried to secure justice for Stephen Lawrence and worked for no fee defending activists against McDonald’s.
As Director of Public Prosecutions he earned a reputation for being tough on corporations and criminals.
But his rise to the top of the justice service was all the more remarkable because – despite his image as a wealthy lawyer – his origins were fairly ordinary.
His parents named him after the first Labour leader, Keir Hardie. He got into the local grammar school and signed up for the Labour Party at 16. He claims he is not that comfortable talking about his early years. “I came from a working-class background. My parents didn’t go round telling people how working-class they were, they just were,” he says.
“Now, because of perceptions people have, it’s necessary for me to say that. Dad was a tool manufacturer and mum was a nurse until she was too ill to work. I hadn’t been in a work environment other than a factory until I left home.”
But he adds: “They didn’t feel hard done by. For many years my parents, like many people, lived with the security of knowing the next generation would have