Labour leader Keir Starmer will face Rishi Sunak in U.K.’s election. Who is he?

Keir Starmer, the Labour party’s 61-year-old leader, is current favourite to win the country’s July 4 election and would be the first Labour prime minister since 2010.

Dutiful, managerial, a bit dull – Keir Starmer is no one’s idea of a firebrand politician.

The Labour Party hopes that is just what Britain needs. Starmer, the center-left party’s 61-year-old leader, is current favourite to win the country’s July 4 election.

Starmer has spent four years as opposition leader dragging his social democratic party from the left towards the political middle ground. His message to voters is that a Labour government will bring change — of the reassuring rather than scary kind.

“A vote for Labour is a vote for stability – economic and political,” Starmer said after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the election on Wednesday.

If Labour wins the election, Starmer will become the first Labour prime minister since 2010.

A lawyer who served as chief prosecutor for England and Wales between 2008 and 2013, Starmer is caricatured by opponents as a “lefty London lawyer.” He was knighted for his role leading the Crown Prosecution Service, and Conservative opponents like to use his title, Sir Keir Starmer, to paint him as elite and out of touch.

Married with two teenage children, Starmer stresses his everyman credentials, especially his love of soccer and support for the Premier League team Arsenal, and his working-class roots. He is the son of a toolmaker and a nurse who named him after Keir Hardie, the Labour Party’s first leader.

His mother suffered from a chronic illness that left her in pain, and Starmer has said that visiting her in hospital and helping to care for her left an indelible mark on him and helped form his strong support for the state-funded National Health Service.