By Isle of Wight Observer
Dear Editor,
Hazel Wyld has every right to criticise the Labour leader for his agenda and policies; however, I find such personal attacks regrettable and unedifying.
As a child, I am sure Keir Starmer longed for his mother to brush his hair and ensure he had a clean hanky. Unfortunately, throughout his teenage years, Sir Keir’s mother occupied a bed on a high-dependancy unit; she suffered from a rare degenerative disease, which robbed her of her mobility and, eventually, her speech.
As Sir Keir’s sister – an NHS worker who Starmer has supported throughout the cost-of-living crisis – reflected, he has always found it difficult to speak about this period, and therefore often comes across as guarded or emotionally ‘buttoned up’. Perhaps, it is this trait, rather than any smugness on Sir Keir’s part, to which Ms Wyld is reacting.
From a working-class home, Starmer worked his way up to become a lawyer, having won a place at a grammar school.
It is also hard to reconcile Hazel Wyld’s characterisation with Starmer the young lawyer, who took on so much unpaid work that his colleagues urged him to think of himself.
In the rough and tumble of an election campaign, it might serve us all well to consider the words of another lawyer, Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s novel, ’To Kill a Mockingbird’: “You can never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
P. Griffiths, Ryde