Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and lawyer who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024 and as Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 2020 to 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015, and was Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.

Born in Southwark, London and raised in Surrey, Starmer attended Reigate Grammar School. He was politically active as a teenager, and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Leeds in 1985 and received a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree from the University of Oxford where he was a student at St Edmund Hall in 1986. After being called to the Bar, Starmer worked predominantly in criminal defence, specialising in human rights. He served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, taking silk as a Queen's Counsel in 2002. During his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he handled a number of major cases, including the Stephen Lawrence murder case. In the 2014 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) for "services to law and criminal justice".

Starmer says his work in Northern Ireland influenced his decision to pursue a political career. He was elected to the House of Commons in the 2015 general election. He supported the Remain campaign in the 2016 European Union membership referendum and advocated a proposed second referendum on Brexit. He served in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Brexit Secretary, and following Corbyn's resignation after Labour's defeat at the 2019 general election, Starmer succeeded him by winning the 2020 leadership election. As Leader of the Opposition, he moved Labour towards the political centre and emphasised the elimination of antisemitism within the party. While his party made significant gains in the 2023 and 2024 local elections, Starmer also oversaw a significant drop in Labour membership in the years leading up to the 2024 election.

Starmer led Labour to a landslide victory at the 2024 general election, ending 14 years of Conservative government with the smallest vote share of any majority government since record-keeping began in 1830. Under Starmer's premiership, the government ended certain winter fuel payments, implemented an early-release scheme for thousands of prisoners to decrease prison overcrowding, and settled a number of public sector strikes. It launched the Border Security Command to replace the Rwanda asylum plan and a National Violent Disorder Programme in response to the 2024 riots. Starmer restricted visa conditions and closed legal migration routes, as outlined in his government's migration white paper. His government has also announced changes to the planning system and to workers' and renters' rights, an increase in the minimum wage, and investment in a new nuclear power station at Sizewell C. In foreign policy, Starmer has continued support for Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war and continued support for Israel in the Gaza war, while also calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages and later formally recognising the State of Palestine. His government negotiated free trade deals with the EU, the US and India, and negotiated the transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius following an International Court of Justice ruling.

Starmer has proved deeply unpopular with the public; dissatisfaction with his premiership has risen since the start of his government. A September 2025 poll by Ipsos indicates that he is the least popular prime minister since records began in 1977.

Keir Rodney Starmer was born on 2 September 1962, in Southwark, south east London, and raised in Oxted, Surrey. He was the second of the four children of Josephine (née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker. His mother developed Still's disease. His mother attended St John's Anglican Church in nearby Hurst Green, while his father was an atheist. In 2020, Starmer said his "parents’ family" was Jewish. On many other occasions, he said his wife’s family was Jewish and his children were being raised Jewish. He was nominally "brought up Church of England". His parents were both Labour Party supporters, and reputedly named him after the party's first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie, although Starmer did not confirm this when asked in 2015.

Starmer passed the 11-plus examination and gained entry to Reigate Grammar School, which at the time was a voluntary-aided selective grammar school. The school converted into an independent fee-paying school in 1976, while he was a student. The terms of the conversion were such that his parents were not required to pay for his schooling until he turned 16, and when he reached that point, the school, by now a charity, awarded him a bursary that allowed him to complete his education there without any parental contribution. The subjects he chose to study in the sixth form during his last two years at school were mathematics, music and physics, in which he achieved A level grades of B, B and C. Among his classmates at Reigate were the musician Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), with whom Starmer took violin lessons; Andrew Cooper, who later became a Conservative peer, and the future conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan. According to Starmer, he and Sullivan "fought over everything... Politics, religion.. You name it."

In his teenage years Starmer was active in Labour Party politics joining the Labour Party Young Socialists at the age of 16. He won a junior exhibition from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he played the flute, piano, recorder and violin until the age of 18. In the early 1980s Starmer was caught by police illegally selling ice creams while trying to raise money during a holiday on the French Riviera. He escaped the incident without punishment, beyond the ice creams being confiscated. The first member of his family to go to university, Starmer read law at the University of Leeds where he became a member of the university's Labour Club before graduating with a first class LLB in 1985. He then went up to St Edmund Hall to pursue postgraduate studies in jurisprudence taking a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) degree from the University of Oxford in 1986. From 1986 to 1987, he served as an editor of Socialist Alternatives, a Pabloite-Trotskyist magazine produced by an organisation under the same name, which represented the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT).