Victoria Starmer, whose husband Keir is Britain’s new prime minister, works in the public health service, is rarely photographed and has kept her presence low key during the election campaign.
But in the days to come, many Britons will begin to recognise the face of the beautiful 50-year-old brunette woman who has been married to the head of the Labour government for more than 15 years.
Since Keir Starmer became Labour leader in 2020 and during the election campaign, Victoria Starmer has given no interviews and has rarely participated in politics.
His public appearances are few and infrequent: at the polling station on election days, in the stands during the Wimbledon tennis tournament and Taylor Swift’s London concert, or at Buckingham Palace for state dinners and receptions.
A rare exception was when she joined her husband on stage at the party’s annual conference in 2023, wearing a red dress, the Labour Party colours.
Despite moving to Downing Street, the former lawyer intends to continue working in the NHS as an occupational health worker.
Former attorney
Victoria Alexander was raised in North London. Her father is a former accountant from a Polish-Jewish background and her mother was a community doctor.
She studied law at Cardiff University in Wales, where she was head of the students’ union.
He also volunteered at the Labour Party’s campaign headquarters under Tony Blair before becoming a solicitor at a law firm.
She then joined the NHS.
The new prime minister has repeatedly referred to their first meeting, when they were both working on a court case in the early 2000s.
He called him and asked whether all the documents prepared by him were correct.
Soon after, he invited her on a date to a pub in Camden, north London.
The couple married in 2007 and have two children – a 16-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter, whom Starmer never names publicly to protect their privacy.
They live in Kentish Town, in his north London constituency.
‘practical’
Although the prime minister says he is not religious, his wife has taught Jewish traditions to their children, including attending synagogue and eating Friday dinner.
Keir Starmer, always ready to praise “Vic”, told Vogue magazine that his wife was “very bubbly and very humble”.
In another interview he said his current job gave him “the opportunity to have a direct look at the challenges facing the NHS and staff morale on a daily basis.”
A family friend once said that Victoria complemented her husband and was “really the yin to him.”
She is seen as an asset to her husband by many Labor advisers, yet she has kept a safe distance from the media during the election campaign.
Keir Starmer insisted she wanted to focus on her son, who is taking his end-of-school exams this year.
But she could not stop the press from mentioning her testimony in court last month, in which three pro-Palestinian activists were prosecuted for protesting outside the family home against the Labour Party’s stance on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
“I felt a bit sick, to be honest. I felt apprehensive and uncomfortable,” she said.
The Labour leader said Starmer in Downing Street intends to keep his children “very well protected” from the media spotlight in future.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
