The British have voted and the count is underway as the UK prepares for a radical change in direction.
Observers expect a landslide victory for the left-wing Labour Party, which would make its leader, Keir Starmer, prime minister and end 14 years of Conservative rule.
“Today Britain can begin a new chapter,” Starmer said as the vote opened on Thursday. “A new era of hope and opportunity after 14 years of chaos and decline.”
Indeed, according to Ipsos UK exit polls on Thursday night, Starmer’s party is leading with around 410 seats, equivalent to an overall majority of 170.
A winning party must win at least 326 seats to form a government.
The vote count is still ongoing, but Starmer appears set to secure victory, despite criticism that he is often described as lacking charisma.
Jill Rutter, a researcher at the London-based research group UK in a Changing Europe, told the New York Times that he “looks relatively prime ministerial” but added: “He’s not going to set hearts racing.”
Starmer entered politics relatively late, being first elected to the UK House of Commons at the age of 52 in 2015. Before that, he was a barrister and rose to become chief prosecutor for England and Wales; he had a high public profile but did not need to ask the public for votes.
As a candidate for high office, Starmer has had little choice but to tell his story. Since becoming Labour leader in 2020, he has emphasised his humble roots, often describing how his father worked as a toolmaker and his mother as a nurse while they raised their children in a “pebble semi-detached”, a small house attached to another property.
But Starmer has at times appeared uncomfortable with the public display of emotion needed to tell his story, despite it being a political asset that offers a stark contrast to the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker, is married to Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian billionaire and Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy. The Sunday Times reported in May that the couple’s net worth was £651 million, or about $830 million.
These last months, Starmer has made a concerted effort to appear closer to voters and to highlight this contrast.
He was helped by an unlikely mentor: former US President Barack Obama.
Obama encouraged Starmer to be vulnerable
In a series of Zoom calls, Obama, who was US president from 2009 to 2017, encouraged Starmer to become more vulnerable and open with the public and spoke with the Labour leader about the difficult decisions he made in the Oval Office.
Politico reported that the two men were first introduced by David Lammy, one of Starmer’s top lieutenants, who will become his foreign secretary if Labour wins.
Speaking on Politico’s “Power Play” podcast in March, Lammy said he and Obama had known each other for 20 years, since meeting at an event for black alumni at Harvard University.
When Obama came to meet Sunak in March, he also had dinner with Lammy, the Telegraph reported.
Lammy said Obama’s influence on Starmer was evident when the Labour leader recently spoke about his family history “much more comfortably than we saw a few years ago”.
“And I know Obama has strong views that Keir should do this,” he added.
David Lammy and Starmer last year. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
Lammy was speaking after Starmer gave a lengthy interview to Sky News in which he described how his mother suffered from Still’s disease, a rare type of inflammatory arthritis.
He said his father spent most of his time caring for her, which had “narrowed” his “emotional space” and made him more emotionally distant from his children.
“I probably should have addressed this issue before he died, and I wish I had, but I didn’t,” Starmer added.
Kitty Donaldson, a political journalist in the UK, told Business Insider that the interview marked a turning point in Starmer’s public display of emotion.
“Up until that point, Starmer had been very rigid, very pragmatic, very strict,” Donaldson said, adding that Obama had “unblocked” and “given permission” for Starmer to open up.
“His leadership style has had an impact,” she said. “Obama is pretty laid-back. This campaign has been more laid-back than we’ve seen so far, and he’s seemed to enjoy traveling the country talking to people.”
Tom Packer, an honorary research fellow at University College London who specializes in US politics and elections, told BI that Starmer’s story had become a “campaign theme”.
He said it helped challenge the idea that all British politicians came from a “well-off background” without hardship.
Obama could advise Starmer on how to deal with Trump
The relationship between Obama and Starmer is likely to continue if Starmer wins Thursday’s election.
Obama has been helping Starmer since at least 2021, when The Guardian reported that they were involved in two hours of private discussions with Lammy about how centre-left parties could return to power.
Speaking on the Power Play podcast in September, Starmer said Obama was the US president he spoke to “most frequently”.
“I’ve spoken to him on a number of occasions and his analysis of the world is always interesting, its challenges, and I’ve just gone through with him what he’s faced, how he’s dealt with the challenges,” Starmer said.
“It’s always helpful to test my ideas on people who have won elections, people who have made tough decisions in office, because it helps me think about how we might approach some of the decisions we might have to make if we win this election,” he added.
Packer said the relationship between Obama and Starmer made sense, given the decades-long ties between Britain’s Labour Party and the U.S. Democratic Party.
Donaldson, meanwhile, suggested that Starmer could seek advice from Obama on how to deal with Donald Trump if the former president is re-elected in November.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the first presidential debate of the year on June 27. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Trump is leading in the polls, and Biden’s faltering performance in the first presidential debate on June 27 has Democrats panicking and urging him to cede his seat to another candidate.
Speaking to Politico last September, Starmer said his team was in talks with Biden, adding: “It’s clear what the outcome I want would be.”
Packer told BI that Starmer and his team would not want to put “their eggs in one basket” and would be keen to establish “some sort of relationship with Trump that works”, regardless of their political differences.
Trump “has a hard time being mean to people who are nice to him,” Packer said.
He added that if Starmer was “nice”, a Labour government could end up having a good relationship with Trump “even if they don’t agree with him on policy”.
He noted that Starmer had been careful to avoid making anti-Trump comments during his election campaign.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 last week, Starmer was asked whether he agreed with Lammy’s 2018 description of Trump as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to the international order”.
“Those are not words I have used before,” Starmer replied.
“I know that the job of the person who leads our country is to deal with the leaders of other countries, who are elected by their people. It is not always up to us to choose the leaders of other countries,” he continued.
Lammy has also softened his stance. He said at a summit in May that Trump’s position on European defense was “misunderstood” and that he simply wanted “Europeans to do more to ensure a better-defended Europe,” according to Politico.
After Trump was found guilty of paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet, Starmer called the situation “unprecedented.”
But he said: “We will work with whoever is elected,” adding: “We have a special relationship with the United States that transcends the president, whoever he is.”
Correction: July 4, 2024 — An earlier version of this article misspelled NR Narayana Murthy’s last name as Murty. It also incorrectly stated the date of the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden as June 27, not June 28.
