Farewell then, KC PM
So it was goodbye this week to Sir Keir Starmer, not the only lawyer to have taken the Downing Street helm.
It was goodbye this week to the silk in Downing Street, as human rights barrister and apparent-Mr-Darcy-inspiration Sir Keir Starmer KC left the office of prime minister to make way for King of the North Andy Burnham.
There are plenty of skills a lawyer can bring to the job of primus inter pares. Good oratory, an open mind, a certain willingness to connive… all of these can be handy in both vocations. And Keir was by no means the first.
Tony Blair was called to the Bar before he was called to politics, meeting his future wife Cherie Blair CBE KC in the process. After a famous stint as a research chemist, Margaret Thatcher retrained as a tax barrister. Founder of the modern welfare state Clement Attlee gave his family’s legal firm a go before being called to the Bar in 1906 - not long before Herbert Asquith took office, himself a silk. And let’s not forget Welsh juggernaut David Lloyd George, the only solicitor to have ever held the role. Nor Spencer Perceval, the only PM to have been assassinated - and a KC at the tender age of 33.