18 January 2024 , 19:00
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Keir Starmer's first encounter with his wife Lady Victoria Starmer was a rather awkward one.
The 61-year-old politician, who served in Jeremy Corbyn's top team, moved into the limelight in 2020 - but his other half has chosen to remain largely out of the public eye. Victoria, 60, rarely makes appearances alongside her husband, but supports him behind closed doors to talk through ways to improve the country.
"She's a streetwise, grounded, brilliant, gorgeous woman who wants as far as she can to get on with her own life and to protect it," he told the Sunday Mirror. "She loves working for the NHS. She loves the team that she's working with. And she and I are doing our best to raise two happy and confident children and that matters hugely to us."
The first time Victoria spoke to Keir over the phone, he really wound her up (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)Just like her husband, Victoria is a trained solicitor who now works in the NHS as an occupational health worker. The pair married in 2007 - the year before Starmer became Director of Public Prosecutions - and share two children, a 15-year-old son called Tony and a daughter, whose name was not made public. The couple met in the early 2000s when working as lawyers, where Victoria had to supply Keir with documents for a case he was working on. But it seems her first impression of the Labour leader was less than impressed.
According to Starmer's unofficial biographer Nigel Cawthorne, author of Keir Starmer: A Life of Contrasts: "He rang her and, having never spoken to her before, queried whether the brief she had sent him was less than '100 percent accurate'. Unflustered, Victoria firmly held her ground against the caller on the other side of the line, reassuring him that she knew her job and, after putting the phone down, said, 'Who the f*** does he think he is?'"
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Keir also recalled the first encounter when speaking on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in 2020, explaining: "I was doing a case in court and it all depended on whether the documents were accurate. I [asked the team] who actually drew up these documents, they said a woman called Victoria, so I said let's get her on the line." He revealed how he ended up hearing her last comment. "She said, 'Who the bleep does he think he is?', then put the phone down on me. And quite right too."
Keir reportedly took her for their first date at the Lord Stanley pub, in Camden, where they now live in a £1.75 million townhouse in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. The family of Victoria, who grew up in the nearby Gospel Oak area, is originally from Poland with Jewish heritage. Although Keir is an atheist, he has mentioned that their children have been brought up in the faith. In an interview on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Keir revealed: "It is perfectly true that my wife's father is Jewish - they came from Poland - and my wife's mother converted when they got married. There is a long tradition of family and faith there. We observe some of the practices, for example, Friday night prayers".
And it appears that if ever Keir got into Downing Street, Victoria would be off doing her own thing, according to a Labour insider. "She's quite sassy in that she's quite unbothered by what he's doing," a source told the Telegraph last year. "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. 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."