Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said that the birth of his children was the most exciting experience of his life, as he sought to address accusations that he lacks charisma.
Starmer said he did not care if people found that boring, arguing that the country needs a “serious person” as leader and that having an adventurous history of experiences like bungee jumping would not make him a better prime minister.
Sir Keir was speaking at the end of an annual party conference in Liverpool where he presented Labour as the “party of the centre ground” but faced ongoing unease from supporters over his difficulties making a personal impact with voters, with former Blair adviser Alastair Campbell suggesting he needed more “oomph”.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Starmer was told that his shadow cabinet colleague Lucy Powell had recently been unable to name anything exciting that he had done.
The father of two – one son and one daughter – replied: “Let me tell you the most exciting thing – the birth of my children.
“It was absolutely incredible to see the two most wonderful beings come into the world. It not only excited me when they were born, It’s excited me every single day since then.
“If people think that’s boring, I don’t care. For me, that is crucially important. I love it.”
He added: “When we’re facing a period of great uncertainty and we’ve got conflict in Ukraine, we’ve got a cost-of-living crisis, we’ve got a government that’s lost control the economy, do we need a serious person steering the country calmly and confidently to a better future? I think the answer to that is yes.
“If I came on and said I’d done a bungee jump, you wouldn’t say ‘Great, now we’ve got the prime minister we need’.”
In an earlier interview, Starmer got into trouble when he voiced support for footballer Bukayo Saka, a star of his beloved Arsenal, to have a permanent place in the England starting line-up, but could not name another striker to partner him up-front.
There was a long pause in his Radio 5 Live interview as he struggled to think of a candidate, saying: “Oh… For England? I don’t know. Um, well I mean.”
Interviewer Rachel Burden had to come to his rescue by suggesting current England captain Harry Kane, an absolute fixture in Gareth Southgate’s side who is hoping to become his nation’s most prolific goal-scorer at this winter’s World Cup in Qatar.
Starmer replied: “Kane and Saka? I’m just trying to think of the formation… Yes, Kane and Saka probably does work best, yeah.”
The Labour leader also risked angering voters in Glasgow when he plumped for Liverpool as his preferred host for the upcoming Eurovision song contest during an interview on BBC1 Breakfast.
