As any would-be prime minister is aware of, there’s nothing like a political partner to brighten up your picture and make you seem extra human to the voters.
Akshata Murty enlightened final 12 months’s Conservative convention in Manchester with revelations that her husband Rishi ‘does love an excellent rom-com – the cheesier the higher’.
Samantha Cameron as soon as helpfully revealed that ‘Dave’ was ‘not superb at selecting up his garments’ and ‘a horrible channel flicker’. Gordon Brown was ‘messy’, ‘noisy’ and ‘no saint’, in keeping with his spouse Sarah.
Throughout her time at Cardiff College Victoria Starmer (then Alexander) was a fearless presence at college students’ union hustings
Even notoriously shy Philip Could agreed to go on BBC’s The One Present in an try to melt his spouse Theresa’s ‘robotic’ picture with endearing anecdotes about being allowed solely ‘somewhat part’ of their bed room wardrobe and being made to take out the bins.
Who is aware of, then, what insights Victoria Starmer may give into her Labour chief husband, a person who, these on the Proper and Left of the spectrum typically agree, may do with a lift within the charisma division.
Alas, whereas 61-year-old workhorse Sir Keir has been diligently trundling alongside the marketing campaign path in his bid to develop into Britain’s subsequent PM, the girl many imagine might be essentially the most highly effective weapon in his political armoury has been lacking fully.
The 50-year-old mother-of-two didn’t even put in an look when Sir Keir launched his manifesto in Manchester final week.
He was supported, as a substitute, by the opposite right-hand girl in his life – his deputy Angela Rayner.
And whereas Rishi Sunak’s spouse was canvassing in Cambridgeshire on Wednesday, all requests for interviews with Woman Vic, as she is affectionately recognized inside Labour circles, have been batted away.
Off the marketing campaign path, although, it’s a completely different matter as Victoria was beaming in an image her husband posted to Twitter/X on Friday of their night time at singer Taylor Swift’s Wembley live performance. The Labour chief captioned the {photograph}: ‘ “Swift” marketing campaign pitstop.’
The official motive for Victoria’s absence from the election battlefield, nevertheless? Her work as an NHS occupational therapist, mixed with the calls for of elevating the Starmers’ teenage son and daughter.
As Sir Keir put it, when requested about his spouse’s whereabouts on Tuesday: ‘One, she is working on the NHS in a hospital. Two, our boy has been doing his GCSEs.’
However former solicitor Woman Starmer hasn’t at all times shied away from the political limelight.
If her days as a number one gentle in Cardiff College College students’ Union are something to go by, she may most likely even train her husband of 17 years a factor or two about electoral success.
Flip again the clock 30 years and legislation undergraduate Victoria (recognized higher as Vicky) Alexander was a fearless presence at college students’ union hustings addressing a whole lot of her friends on sizzling subjects of the day, such because the freezing of grants, the introduction of loans and scholar hardship.
Twice she swept to victory with huge majorities – first in 1993, when she was elected welfare officer, and once more, a 12 months later, when she secured a post-graduate sabbatical as president of Cardiff College College students’ Union. Candid images of her celebrating her win emerged final week – as did snaps of her counting the vote and singing at a karaoke night time – courtesy of Rob Watkins, image editor of the college’s scholar newspaper, now residing in Finland, who solely just lately realised the importance of the negatives he nonetheless stored from his scholar days.
Victoria took up the presidency in 1995, after ending her diploma, on an £11,000 wage. At simply 21 she was liable for a £5.3 million finances and dealt with earnings from the coed union’s two nightclubs, journey brokers, eating places, bars and a shopping center.
A profile of her within the Wales on Sunday newspaper acknowledged: ‘Sharp-suited Vicky is a far cry from the picture of a scruffy subversive as she bustles between conferences with school officers and accountants.’
She mentioned on the time: ‘The common scholar finds politics a turn-off, so it’s essential the way you current it’ – a message which, three many years on, her husband would do effectively to heed.
Woman Starmer pictured at Cardiff College College students Union with the walkie talkie she carried throughout occasions
Defending her repute as a average Labour supporter at a time when John Main was PM, she mentioned: ‘We nonetheless wish to change the world and I wouldn’t thoughts eliminating this authorities, however we’re a bit extra sensible now.’
‘She was very spectacular,’ says Rob Watkins, who has solely optimistic reminiscences of her. ‘She was a powerful campaigner. I bear in mind her taking the function very critically. However she was additionally humorous and assured and superb with folks,’ he says.
‘She was clearly very fashionable as a result of she received greater than two-thirds of the votes each instances she was elected. You might inform that she cared loads about what she did and the scenario folks discovered themselves in at college. She’d at all times be working round with a walkie-talkie at union occasions.’
In 1993, when Victoria was nonetheless welfare officer, she was interviewed by Wales on Sunday for a monetary information for freshers, and instructed college students take a ‘quiet sit down and a cup of tea’ earlier than contemplating their funds.
‘Draw up a listing of what your revenue is and what your outgoings are more likely to be, and draw up a finances plan,’ she mentioned. ‘If you happen to’re not disciplined you’ll find your self in bother in a short time.’
The next month she spoke to the South Wales Echo to precise concern that safe-sex messages had not received by, after a survey revealed that greater than half of male college students at Cardiff claimed that they had intercourse on first dates.
Describing the statistics as ‘alarming’, she additionally countered that bravado may need tainted some responses to the questionnaire.
‘Individuals sit round filling them in with their mates – it may not be that correct,’ she admitted.
Victoria’s tenure as president, nevertheless, was not with out controversy – an expertise she may draw on when providing recommendation to Sir Keir. In January 1995 she was accused by Pupil Union council members of performing unconstitutionally once they declare she tried to hurry by proposed structural modifications to the council. She later issued a presidential decree ordering the postponement of union elections.
In Could that 12 months a fellow council member, who claimed she had ‘ridden rough-shod’ over them, demanded she be disciplined for holding the committee in contempt and for ‘conduct detrimental to the nice standing of the union’. However these claims didn’t result in any disciplinary process.
Not that this kerfuffle put her off politics. By 1997 she had returned to London (the place she was born in 1973) and was a volunteer at Tony Blair’s marketing campaign HQ.
However Victoria had her coronary heart set on being a lawyer. She certified as a solicitor in 2001 and labored for the London agency Hodge Jones & Allen.
Her mom Barbara, who died after a fall in February 2020, was a well-liked North London GP who grew up in Doncaster and handed her love of horse racing on to Victoria and her older sister Judith, a main faculty instructor.
Her father Bernard, an economics lecturer who turned a chartered accountant, was born in Hackney in 1929.
By then his Jewish household, who got here to Britain from Poland earlier than the Second World Struggle, had modified their title from Zolkind to Alexander.
She went to £26,500-a-year Channing Faculty for Women, in north London, which is now amongst hundreds of personal colleges set to be hit by her husband’s risk to cost VAT on charges. She met senior barrister Keir in 2005 when she ready case recordsdata for him. After asking twice if she was ‘sure’ they had been right, he overheard her muttering to a colleague as she put the cellphone down: ‘Who the f*** does he suppose he’s?’
A couple of weeks later vegetarian Victoria sat subsequent to pescatarian Keir at a authorized dinner, the place he was served meat. They organized their first date at The Lord Stanley pub in Camden.
By then Keir had a number of severe relationships behind him, together with one which noticed him purchase a home with human rights barrister Phillippa Kaufmann.
With Victoria, nevertheless, he had discovered somebody, as he later put it, ‘grounded, sassy, humorous, street-wise – and completely attractive too’.
He proposed spontaneously on vacation in Santorini in Greece. Her response was: ‘Gained’t we want a hoop?’ They married in 2007 and dwell within the four-bedroom terraced home Sir Keir purchased for £650,000 in 2004 and which is now value near £2 million.
By all accounts the couple are blissfully glad. ‘Love and Vic are two sides of the identical coin,’ he instructed The Mail on Sunday’s You journal final week. ‘It sounds naff however we’re made for one another. If something our love will get stronger day-after-day. She makes me full, who I actually am.’
Victoria is alleged to be reluctant to disrupt the household’s life in leafy north London if her husband wins the election, and has no intention of giving up her job.
However she has already had a bitter style of life as a high-profile politician’s spouse.
Final week she instructed Westminster magistrates she felt ‘sick’ after returning along with her son in April to seek out two pro-Palestine protesters outdoors the household house, who had been later charged with public order offences. It stays to be seen if this expertise is sufficient to persuade her that the household should up sticks for the safety of Downing Road.
Mr Watkins is in little doubt she’s going to rise to the event.
He says: ‘If she turns into the Prime Minister’s spouse, she received’t search out the limelight however she’ll know the drill and simply get on with it.’
