I think we can take it as read that, by now, we all know what Starmer’s dad did for a living. Rodney Starmer was a tool maker. You might be less certain if asked to name Victoria Starmer’s job – she works in occupational health for the NHS (which Starmer has said gives him “a direct line of sight on a daily basis into the challenges of the NHS and the morale of the staff”).
So what do we know about the likely future prime minister’s wife? She joined Starmer on stage at the launch of Labour’s campaign, but has otherwise rarely been seen on the trail. The only photos of them together during the last six weeks were when they went to see Taylor Swift, telling reporters: “I know I will be asked what is my favourite song and I am not going to pretend I have got every album and know every song, although Change is the one for obvious reasons.”
And Starmer has said that if he’s elected, “she’s absolutely going to carry on working, she wants to and she loves it. It’s also good for me because it gives me an insight into the NHS.”
Gaby hopes that Victoria will be able to carry on with her life, career and privacy without her husband’s job getting in the way too much. “It’s 2024, I do not care who the PM is married to it shouldn’t matter,” she says. “We shouldn’t be talking about it; it only matters if there is a conflict of interest. I don’t take my husband to work, and I can’t think why anyone else should have to.”
The rightwing press have tried to turn her absence from the campaign trail into a talking point. “They’re trying to make it seem suspicious,” Gaby says. “No, she’s got a job and a kid doing GCSEs, there’s other stuff going on.” Despite this, there’s still an expectation, from some in the media, that “the wives of leaders should be doing interviews for women’s mags”.
“Grazia readers have moved on,” she says. “They expect to see female politicians interviewed in their own right and in their professional capacity. If a leader can’t find a way to make themselves relatable without a spouse, perhaps they shouldn’t be a leader. It was also sad that Theresa May felt she had to explain why she didn’t have children, and disappointing that Andrea Leadsom [who challenged May for the leadership in 2016] suggested that having children made her a better choice to be prime minister. We should have moved beyond all this.”
Letting kids be kids
Victoria, who is 50 despite some journalists repeatedly reporting that she is 60, is known to not be keen to move from their home in north London to Downing Street. Their two children, who have not been photographed in public and whose names have so far been kept out of the media entirely, have their doubts, too. But Starmer reckons he’s convinced them, although he might need to buy a dog to seal the deal.
“They are worried, if I’m honest,” he told ITV’s This Morning. “They are worried about it, because, I think any parent would understand this, if you are a teenage child you don’t want things to change.
“We’ve got a cat, a cat called Jojo, but my kids are on a campaign to get a dog. They’ll take any dog but a German shepherd is what our daughter wants.”
The Starmers are fiercely protective of their children’s privacy, which Gaby contrasts to that famous picture of Tony and Cherie Blair with their kids on the steps of Number 10 on the day of his first general election victory in 1997 (above).
“The degree to which they have kept their children out of [the spotlight] so far is impressive, and not something a PM has tried before,” Gaby says. “I really respect them for it, and wish them the best of luck trying to preserve it. But it is going to be difficult.”
Gaby has met many of our previous PMs’ and opposition leaders’ kids, and recalls an interview with Gordon Brown being repeatedly interrupted by “his boys running round the house in Scotland. And Blair [aged 43 when first elected PM in 1997] used his kids as a way of showing a changing of the guard, ‘Here I am a young family man’, compared to John Major [then 54].”
As far as Gaby is aware, the only journalist to meet Starmer’s kids has been his unofficial biographer, Tom Baldwin. “He describes being at home with them at breakfast time, with the kids and Vic being around, but that’s very controlled access, and obviously no cameras around,” she says. “Whereas Blair had cameras round filming the kids’ piano practice.”
There are likely to be two pressure points that could lead to the Starmer children losing their privacy, Gaby says. “One is if they do something newsworthy, a la Euan Blair getting drunk celebrating the end of his GCSE exams.” The eldest of Starmer’s children is in their GCSE year, but has hopefully been warned to not do that.
“The other is the temptation politicians have to bring the family out as a sort of defensive shield when things aren’t going well – ‘Look, I’m just like you, struggling with the same challenges’,” Gaby says. “From the efforts they have gone to so far, I don’t expect them [the Starmers] to do that.”
Rishi Sunak has mostly kept his children out of the public eye, but they have been seen at some events including a street party on Downing Street to celebrate the King’s coronation, and he posted a photo of them on Instagram during his bid for the Tory party leadership in 2022. He also described them as “the experts of [the climate crisis] in my household”.
An attack on private life
The Tory party machine has now launched an attack on Starmer as wanting to be only “a part-time prime minister” after he said he would try to finish work by 6pm on Fridays. It comes after Starmer told Virgin Radio on Monday: “We’ve had a strategy in place and we’ll try to keep to it, which is to carve out really protected time for the kids, so on a Friday – I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after 6 o’clock, pretty well come what may. There are a few exceptions, but that’s what we do.”
Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, said yesterday that it was “unrealistic”. “I also think it’s a bit odd, because they’re also saying they want to make people in the NHS work overtime and at weekends, so I think to do that on one hand, and on the other hand say that you’re not going to work past 6pm is a bit tin-eared.”
Quite apart from the potentially antisemitic undertone to the attack (Victoria is of Jewish heritage and Starmer has spoken about having Friday night Shabbat dinner with his family every week), Gaby reckons the attacks could end up making the Tories “look ridiculous”. “They’re making it sound like if Russia invaded at 6:15pm, Starmer wouldn’t answer the phone.”
In the past, she says, the public may have expected their leaders to be Stakhanovites – when Blair had Leo, his fourth child, while in office in 2000, there was a huge debate about paternity leave, and in the end he took a grudging “week off”. At the time Blair said: “You’ve got to have some common sense about it – you want to spend more time with your baby, but you don’t give up the job.” But now being honest about juggling relatable challenges is probably an advantage.
“There has long been a feeling that private life shouldn’t intrude on your public duty,” says Gaby, “but that has changed. Now people want you to care, and you could lose support if you’re not looking like an involved parent.”
