Who is Keir Starmer, the Next UK Prime Minister?

London: Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, is poised to become Britain's next Prime Minister with his party heading to the massive majority in the parliamentary election, the exit polls indicated, predicting Rishi Sunak's Conservatives would suffer a historic setback.

The Centre-Left Labour leader on Friday thanked voters and said the country's people are "ready for change" and to "end the politics of performance".

Starmer, 61, in his victory speech after winning from Holborn and St Pancras, said whether people voted for him or not, "I'll serve every person in this constituency." 

According to the exit poll, which is often quite close to the final tally, Labour could win as many as 410 seats, comfortably crossing the halfway 326 mark and notching up a 170-seat majority with the incumbent Tories led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak down to just 131 seats.

He won with 18,884 votes - with pro-Palestinian activist, independent Andrew Feinstein, in second place. Starmer's majority, however, was down significantly from 22,766 in 2019, to 11,572. 

Who Is Keir Starmer?

Starmer has served as a human rights lawyer and public prosecutor looking to focus his relentless work ethic and methodical mind on fixing the country.

If the exit polls predicting the Labour Party's historic win are confirmed, the 61-year-old Starmer will be the oldest person to become British Prime Minister in almost half a century -- and it comes just nine years since he was first elected to parliament.

In 2008, Starmer was appointed director of public prosecutions (DPP) for England and Wales when Labour's Gordon Brown was Britain's PM. 

Till 2013, he kept on monitoring and dealing with the prosecution of MPs for abusing their expenses, journalists for phone-hacking, and young rioters involved in unrest across England.

Starmer was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, but never officially used the prefix ‘Sir’. With his experience as an activist, he was elected to the Parliament, representing the left-leaning seat of North London, in 2015. 

In 2020, the Labour leaders showed faith in Starmer to lead the party in the UK Parliament, right after the party faced the worst setback in the election in 85 years.