They call it the rule of six. Over a beer, at lunch, on a long train journey: from these encounters colleagues report Sir Keir Starmer is great company. Warm, witty, easy-going. Provided, that is, you are not the sixth person to join whatever table or huddle the Labour leader finds himself at the head of. In an instant the wisecracking everyman friends spend so much time describing disappears. In his place comes stiffness and circumspection. Or, as a senior Labour official is wont to put it: “He becomes a lawyer.”
Remember this: Starmer is not a professional politician. Not for him the long process of accreditation to which most aspiring Labour MPs submit: no dogsbody job in a parliamentary office, no bag-carrying at a trade
