Starmer’s football obsession isn’t just good politics,

Politicians of all stripes reach for the beautiful game’s common touch but the Labour leader’s affinity is genuine, says his biographer

When England kick off their Euro 2024 campaign against Serbia on Sunday night and most of this nation’s attention is fixed far from politics, Keir Starmer will be watching the football and drinking beer in a London pub.

Although not an official media event, it’s a fair bet that someone will post a photograph of him doing so. And jaundiced observers might reasonably conclude this is merely part of the Labour leader’s own quest for victory in a campaign where he’s trying to say, according to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, “Look at me, ‘I’m a man of the people.’”