What with all the news about Boris heading to ICU it might have bypassed some of our readers that there’s a new leader of the Labour Party in the UK, and, surprise surprise he was a barrister.
Need to know more about his background?
The Lawyer (UK) writes
Keir Starmer: 25 years of coverage in The Lawyer
Barrister Keir Starmer has been elected as Labour leader and thus becomes Leader of the Opposition. He has been mentioned many times in the pages of The Lawyer over the years: here are some of the most notable occasions.
29 August 1995: Starmer’s first mention in The Lawyer, as a junior barrister of some eight years call, cited in a list of some of the profession’s leading advocates: “Instructed in a wide range of civil liberties cases and a very good specialist in this expanding area for lawyers and barristers.”
He will get regular name-checks in future list of “ones to watch”. In November 1996 he is noted one of a crop of the most promising juniors alongside others who will go on to great things, including Rabinder Singh and Michael Fordham, both now judges, and Dinah Rose. In November 1997 his peers say he is “a radical with a good reputation”. By 1998 he is described as “head and shoulders above everyone else”.
1 October 2001: Starmer is quoted in The Lawyer for the first time, talking about the implementation of the Human Rights Act the year before.
“The predictions of what a catastrophe it would be last September just haven’t come true,” he says. “The courts haven’t been bulked out by unnecessary cases.”
“I think in the first year the judges have done pretty well,” he adds. “It’s been hard. Inevitably, having grown up in a common law system, it takes some adjustment. Of course, there are judges who are truly committed to human rights jurisprudence, and they have dragged the others along.”
1 April 2002: Starmer makes silk.
15 February 2005: He has already made The Lawyer for a number of human rights and public law cases, but in 2005 we reported on one of Starmer’s most famous victories. Alongside Mark Stephens, he acts for the pair of environmentalists who took fast food chain McDonald’s to court in the ‘McLibel’ trial, sensationally winning an appeal in the European Court of Human Rights against the British government.
Lasting over a decade, it had been the longest British libel trial ever.
