Your guide to the department's cast of ministerial characters, and what’s in their in-trays
New prime minister Sir Keir Starmer is tasked with running the country, but the Office of the Prime Minister, No.10 Downing Street, is not officially a department in its own right. Instead, it is part of the Cabinet Office – although the prime minister’s ministerial salary is paid by the Treasury.
No.10 is the base for a mix of civil servants and politically appointed staff, with the PM’s chief of staff – former Cabinet Office insider Sue Gray – and principal private secretary Elizabeth Perelman at the top of the political and official trees respectively. Other key players include head of political strategy Morgan McSweeney, who previously acted as director of campaigns for the Labour Party, and director of communications Matthew Doyle, who previously worked for Labour under Tony Blair.
Working alongside Starmer is deputy PM Angela Rayner, who is also secretary of state in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Starmer went to great efforts to ram home his voter-friendly personal history in this summer’s general election campaign. So now the nation will never be able to forget he’s the son of a nurse and a toolmaker who grew up in a Surrey semi, and that cash was sometimes in short supply.
Less well known is that Starmer attended Reigate Grammar School with Norman Cook, better known as musician, DJ and producer Fatboy Slim. Music was a big part of Starmer’s youth, in which he played the flute, piano and violin. However, Cook told Starmer’s biographer, Tom Baldwin, that the new PM is “a way better politician than he was a violinist”.
Another former schoolmate, the writer Andrew Sullivan, remembers Starmer as a “near-Bolshevik bruiser”.
Labour politics remained a thread in Starmer’s life through his early 20s. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Leeds, he studied for a postgraduate degree in civil law at Oxford – while serving as an editor for hard-left magazine Socialist Alternatives.
Starmer was called to the bar in 1987 and practised in human rights, international law, judicial review, extradition, criminal law, police law and media law. He was a founding member of Doughty Street Chambers in 1990.
The future PM acted in some of Doughty Street’s most important cases during his time at the chambers: defending the legal aid system, overturning death sentences in Commonwealth countries, and upholding freedom of speech and human rights.
He also gave free assistance to Greenpeace activists Helen Steel and David Morris in their high-profile libel battle with fast-food chain McDonald’s, which was the subject of the Ken Loach documentary McLibel.
Starmer was human rights adviser to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland between 2003 and 2008. In 2007, he became head of Doughty Street Chambers but left the following year on his appointment as director of public prosecutions and head of the CPS.
He gained a reputation for success in reforming the service. One of the biggest changes he made was digitising paper files, telling CSW in 2013 that it was “one of the defining moments in the history of the criminal justice system”. Starmer also changed guidelines for sexual abuse cases, telling prosecutors they should begin with believing the victim.
The coalition government tasked Starmer with cutting 27% from the CPS budget in three years. He provided the required savings in 18 months. Dominic Grieve, who was attorney general at the time, said Starmer had delivered “an austere service which was functional” ahead of schedule and without any “pushback”.
Starmer would later tell Channel 4 News that overseeing the CPS cuts had given him “first-hand experience of what it means to inflict austerity on a public service” and that the experience had left him “determined that we’ll never do it again”.
Dame Alison Saunders, who worked alongside Starmer as chief crown prosecutor for London before succeeding him as DPP, recalled the future PM using the forced austerity drive to make positive changes to CPS operations, “rather than just doing salami slice-type cuts”.
She told CSW earlier this year that Starmer “appreciated you couldn’t just keep saying to people, ‘We need you to take 5% off your budget, or 10% off your budget,’ and then come back the next year and say the same”.
“I think from that perspective, he will be very aware of the impact of budget cuts on departments and how you might best deal with it,” she said.
Nazir Afzal, who was Starmer’s chief crown prosecutor for North West England, said the future PM “regularly talked about wanting to rename the CPS the Public Prosecution Service”.
Starmer left the CPS in November 2013 and was awarded his knighthood – for services to law and criminal justice – in 2014’s New Year Honours list.
Selected for the safe Labour seat of Holborn and St Pancras, Starmer was elected as an MP in 2015 and became shadow minister for immigration. In June 2016, he resigned in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. He returned as shadow secretary of state for exiting the European Union a little over three months later.
He became the leader of the Labour Party in 2020 and his progressive politics began to move more into the centre-ground. Starmer’s ideological shift has resulted in criticism that he has no qualms about turning his back on political promises, and the Politico website claimed in February this year that he had made 27 U-turns “and counting”, although several examples fell short of being policy commitments. In May, the Daily Mail added Starmer’s decision to resume eating fish after being a vegetarian for 30 years as a further “flip flop”.
Starmer’s wife of 17 years, Victoria, remains vegetarian. The couple’s two teenage children were raised as vegetarians but given the option of eating meat from the age of 10.
Josh Simons, former director of the Labour Together think tank, now MP for Makerfield, credits the Party’s revived fortunes to Starmer’s “capacity to improve outcomes by reforming institutions”. Some on the left view his reforms as ruthless.
Patrick Stevens was head of the CPS’s international section during Starmer’s five-year tenure. He described his former boss as “an incredible leader who inspires people who work for him to be the very best they can”. Stevens told CSW Starmer has very little ego, is very strong and willing to take challenge, and believes in consultation, openness and transparency. But he does acknowledge a steely focus on the part of the new PM.
“All views are valid and welcome, but once a path has been decided on and he’s confident that there’s the evidence base and that it’s a priority, then he will be ruthlessly focused on delivery,” he said. “He doesn’t do anything that isn’t going to make a difference.”
To paraphrase the title of Fatboy Slim’s breakthrough album, Starmer’s come a long way, baby. But he’s only weeks into his toughest job yet.
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