Keir Starmer nearly quit after Hartlepool by-election defeat, says new biography

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Sir Keir Starmer considered resigning after the crushing defeat in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021, according to a new biography of the Labour leader.

Nearly two and a half years later, Sir Keir is now tipped to become the next prime minister with a poll lead far ahead of Rishi Sunak’s Tories.

But the by-election loss in May 2021 in the Co Durham constituency was a bitter blow to Sir Keir and his top team, as the party had held the seat since it was created in 1974.

Keir Starmer: The Biography, by Tom Baldwin, suggests that the Holborn and St Pancras MP told close aides in the immediate wake of the by-election that he was going to quit, before being persuaded otherwise.

Chris Ward, a former close aide, told the biographer: “Keir kept saying that he felt he would have to go, that the result showed the party was going backwards and he saw it as a personal rejection.

“I told him it was far too soon for that kind of thing, but it was a rocky few hours.”

Sir Keir, who is quoted in the book, reflected on the defeat.

“I’m not fulfilling some lifelong dream here. I could happily work in the bookshop or something,” he says.

According to the book, which is being serialised in The Times, Sir Keir’s wife Vic was among those who urged him not to act too hastily.

Another key figure who helped keep Sir Keir in his post was Morgan McSweeney, who remains Labour’s highly influential director of campaigns.

It comes after an extract from the book revealed Sir Keir talking movingly about his late father’s death.

The Labour leader has previously talked of how his relationship with his toolmaker father, Rodney, was more “distant” as he cared for his mother, Josephine, who suffered with a rare illness.

His mother, an NHS nurse, died just weeks before he became an MP in 2015, while his father passed away three years later.

In the book, he also spoke for the first time about the “tough life” of his younger brother who suffers from learning disabilities and reveals he got into fights in order to protect him after he was called “thick” or “stupid” by other children.