Doused in glitter after a protester crashed the stage before Keir Starmer's speech at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool today, the Labour leader had only gratitude to express; that it was him and not his wife. ‘My wife’s dress is really beautiful,’ he explained.
And so it was. We were offered a glimpse of Lady Victoria Starmer just moments before, as she joined her husband on stage in a resplendent red dress by Canadian-British designer Edeline Lee, which would, perhaps, have been tarnished by the glitter of protest.
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Lady Victoria Starmer never fails to fly the red flag for Labour sartorially (having donned the shade at three consecutive conferences now) but these annual gatherings are often our only glimpse of the typically reclusive spouse of Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer. Following Akshata Murty’s surprise appearance a week earlier at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, it could well have been a ‘battle of the First Ladies’ but not so for the elusive Lady Starmer.
When asked by the Sunday Mirror if his wife would be introducing him before his speech, Keir Starmer responded: 'I don’t think I’d put her through that… I talk to her about what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it. And she has views on all of that. But that’s the normal to and fro in a family.'
Nevertheless, Lady Starmer was by her husband's side this week, pictured looking equally casual in an appropriately red jumper and skinny jeans as the couple looked wistfully out over the docks in Liverpool. The woman who may well soon be the First Lady of Westminster is indeed rarely seen, so what do we know about her?
Married since 2007, the husband and wife are both trained lawyers, with Lady Starmer previously working as a solicitor, while her husband earned his knighthood thanks to his work around abolishing the death penalty globally.
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They met as lawyers in the noughties, after Lady Starmer drew up documents for a case Starmer was working on – which led to a successful date at the Lord Stanley pub on Camden Park Road, and the rest, as they say, is history. Today Lady Starmer works in occupational health for the NHS.
Sir Keir Starmer recently revealed that this allows ‘a direct line of sight on a daily basis into the challenges of the NHS and the morale of the staff.’
A lot about the low-key couple isn’t known, but what we do know is that they live with their two children, an 13-year-old son, Toby, and a 11-year-old daughter, in a £1.75 million house in Camden, North London.
While Starmer is fiercely schtum about his private life – hence his reticence to publicly name his daughter – we do know that his wife, originally from Poland, is Jewish, and that the couple's children are being raised in the Jewish faith. Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle in March 2021, the Labour leader opened up about his wife's faith, saying: 'As you probably know my wife’s family is Jewish. On her father’s side, there are bar mitzvahs, synagogues — there’s all the traditions.'
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He also spoke about their Friday night dinner tradition, which sees his wife's family invited to their Camden home for supper, saying: ‘It is about just being with the family. It’s about being a bit more disciplined, about being home with our children and the family — they are growing up fast.’
In terms of the ‘first lady’ she would prove to be, a Labour insider told the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey: ‘She’s quite sassy in that she’s quite unbothered by what he’s doing. If he ever gets into Downing Street, she’s going to be very much leading her own life. She’s not going to be in the spotlight like Cherie Blair, but more of a background Sarah Brown-type figure.
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‘They have a great dynamic – she spends quite a lot of time taking the mickey out of him because he can be so serious. I’ve never known her to be particularly political – she’s always had her own interests.’
Sir Keir set out a 'fairer, greener, more dynamic nation' last year, one that resulted in a standing ovation. If his future holds the key to Downing Street (as the current 17 point YouGov poll lead reflects), we’ll be sure to see a lot more of his wife, Lady Starmer.
