Makes Kiddush every Friday: the candidate who is expected to be the Prime Minister of Great Britain

Keir Starmer believes in hard work. The Labor leader, 61 years old, sleeps six hours a night, gets up at five in the morning, and a series of acquaintances from different periods of his life defined his ability to work as “phenomenal”, “extraordinary” and even “a little tiring to watch”. Starmer took advantage of this diligence and discipline at the school where he excelled, at the universityDuring his law studies and a decades-long career as a lawyer and then as a public servant in the British prosecution. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said a former girlfriend.

He also used this ability to restore the “Labor” party, which was on the rocks after a long and destructive term of Jeremy Corbyn from the more radical wing of the British left, and is now on his way to conquering power in Britain in the elections that will be held on Thursday, with a huge majority. The latest polls predict a resounding victory for Labor, after 14 years in opposition. Even safe seats like that of Liz Truss (Prime Minister for a few weeks on behalf of the Conservatives) are swinging. Between 450 and 500 contractual seatsm pollsters for Labor, out of 650 in total. If the polls match, Starmer is going to become prime minister with a majority not recorded in a century.

The role that earned him the title “pot”

Starmer is not afraid of the responsibility. In recent days, he did not hesitate to assure the citizens of economic and social rehabilitation, after years of chaos led by the conservatives, after the Brexit saga, the inflation crisis, the interest rate increases and the faltering public services. If he is elected, he said this week, at the end of his five years in office, “the citizens of Great Britain will be in a better situation materially, and the public services will function again.”

The issue of public service is one of the main characteristics of whoever is expected to become the 58th Prime Minister of Great Britain on Friday. Starmer prides himself on being born into a working London family – his mother was a nurse and his father a laborer. It was even named after the first leader of the Labor Party. He studied law at the University of Leeds and Oxford, and at the age of 25 he entered the bar.

After two decades of working as a lawyer, which mainly included specialization in human rights, he was appointed the head of the prosecution of England and Wales, a position he held between 2008 and 2013, and which earned him the coveted title “Sir”. He said that this transition from the field of human rights to public prosecution made him change his approach to a more institutional one. Conservative justice ministers under whom Abed also say that he worked very professionally, and some said that he took a stricter approach than usual towards criminals.

Two years later, with Labor deep in opposition, Starmer entered politics. The transition from prosecution to politics is considered by many to be an exception. Starmer climbed the party during the years of great turmoil caused by Corbyn’s mainstream takeover, serving in his shadow government. The bubbling anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism of Corbyn and many of his camp, along with other positions belonging to the radical left in the fields of labor and economics, led to public criticism of the party, to criticism from the Jewish community, and contributed to a massive defeat in the parliamentary elections in 2019, which led to Corbyn’s resignation.

Starmer then ran for party leadership and won. After a government commission report criticized the spread of anti-Semitism in Labor under Corbyn and it refused to accept its findings, Starmer did not hesitate to suspend him.

During Johnson’s years as Prime Minister, Starmer struggled to cope with the ex-journalist’s charisma and empty promises in retrospect, but once Johnson got into trouble for not telling the truth, and the Conservative Party collapsed in public opinion, Labor watched with pleasure as the mandates simply flowed to them. His critics will say that this is luck. For many Brits, Starmer has so far been considered a smooth slate. Half of them said in surveys that they do not actually know what his positions are. He is also considered a character that is difficult to relate to personally. “There are those who will say that you are stiff and boring,” an interviewer slapped him in the past. “Cheers,” he replied. “You’re a political robot,” shouted a visitor to a Labor rally. Starmer was silent in response.

But after Johnson’s hand-waving and Sunak’s flurry of zig-zags, it seems these qualities of Starmer’s manage to convey a sense of stability to the Brits. What also helped was the fact that he broke into the economic center with promises not to raise taxes, arm the army at an unprecedented rate, limit immigration and be pro-business. “We are pro-business and pro-workers at the same time,” said Starmer, “we are the true party of wealth creation.” Even now, he promises to act with fiscal responsibility, and not to pursue progressive ideals. And so, against the European trend, Britain is about to receive a center-left government.

Stands by Israel, despite the criticism in his party

From the Israeli and Jewish point of view, it is worth noting that Starmer’s connection to Judaism is deep. He is married to Victoria Alexander (49), a lawyer from a Jewish family whom he met during his work, and they have two children, who, according to reports in the past, went to a Jewish school, among other things. In an interview before the elections, he revealed that “every Friday” (more or less, according to him), the family makes kiddush, buys challah, and occasionally goes to a reform synagogue in St. John’s Wood. “Half of the family is Jewish, either here in Britain or in Israel,” he said in an interview, and “it is very important to us that the children know about Judaism.”

This connection is also what helped him launch a campaign to purge the Labor Party of the multitude of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist representatives who entered it during the Corbyn era. “If you are anti-Semitic, you have no place in the Labor Party,” he said when he was running for party leadership. This connection is also behind his extraordinary show of support in Israel after October 7. “We stand by Israel,” he repeated and clarified several times, even though within the party he faced the danger of an internal rebellion – from Labor members from the more radical wing, many of them Muslims. They warned him that the party would lose the Muslim vote if it did not call for a ceasefire. Starmer refused. He continued to try and quell the rebellion even in the last months.

But within his own party he still faces criticism and opposition. A member of parliament promised during the election campaign this week that the Labor government would “stop the supply of weapons to Israel”, even though this is not included in the party’s platform. There is also increasing pressure on him to recognize a Palestinian state, as the platform states that it must be done even before the end of the negotiations on the existence of one. In general, the Labor Party is much less pro-Israel than the Conservatives. Starmer will have to deal with it. The general way in which he chooses to deal with future challenges can perhaps be found in what he said regarding the possibility that the family will soon move to Downing 10, as required by the position of Prime Minister. “Our approach as a family is to deal with things as they happen,” he said.