Keir Starmer put questions about the “most exciting thing he’s ever done” to bed last night at the Guardian hustings.
The Labour leadership hopeful has attracted some unwarranted attention since appearing on LBC with presenter Nick Ferrari on Monday.
Starmer had said: “I’ve done lots of exciting things. Playing football, going to football with my kids”, which was met with mockery online.
But pressed on the issue last night he delivered a powerful response to his critics.
He said:
“These questions are supposed to be the measure of us and they are so ridiculous. In the last four weeks my wife’s mum has died, we’d been in intensive care with her before she died for 17 days.
“I had been trying to be the best husband I could be to my wife, the best dad I could be to my grieving children. Then I’m asked ‘What is the most exciting thing you’ve ever done?’ And I’m judged on that.
“I know who I am.”
The response has since gone viral online, with a tweet posted by Helen Pidd of the Guardian garnering close to 20,000 interactions in the first 12 hours.
Keir Starmer gets a massive round of applause at the #GuardianLive hustings in Manchester when asked if it’s true the most exciting thing he has done is taken his kids to football. This was his very powerful answer: pic.twitter.com/NZyNIvljp4
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) February 25, 2020
Related: Yanis Varoufakis exclusive: To persecute Assange is to “murder the truth”
Since you are here
Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.
Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.
Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.
If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.
To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.
The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.
The shop can be found here.
You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .
