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Keir Starmer has said he is a fan of the Scottish post-punk band Orange Juice and northern soul, in a deep dive of his musical tastes and personal life.
On BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions, Starmer chose a selection of his favourite music including works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Elgar, and reflected on his own musical journey, which included learning to play violin alongside Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim, at school.
Starmer was a keen musician in his childhood, playing flute, piano, recorder and violin, and won a Guildhall School of Music and Drama scholarship. He said he still listened to music every day as a form of escape.
He described the jangle pop band Orange Juice as “absolutely fantastic” and said he had discovered their music after moving to Leeds for university, where he studied law in the 1980s.
“The whole cultural experience going from rural village life to a really busy, diverse, fantastic, living city like Leeds. And with it came a whole new chapter of music,” he said. “I love the music [of Orange Juice], I love the lyrics, but also for me it’s this memory of going to Leeds.”
In an interview recorded at Chequers last week, he also talked about his family’s love of northern soul music. “If you can imagine me, sleeves rolled up, chopping in the kitchen, happy, listening to northern soul and my daughter singing away at the top of her voice,” he said.
Starmer shared personal details of his family life, including his mother’s struggle with Still’s disease, a rare auto-inflammatory disorder that led to her death weeks before he was first elected as an MP in 2015.
“I later learned that my dad had organised a way to get her into her wheelchair, he’d adapted their car and he had arranged that they would be there when I was sworn in as a member of parliament. I didn’t know this and of course that couldn’t happen,” he said.
His first song choice was music from Swan Lake, in tribute to his mother’s love of ballet.
The prime minister became emotional as he discussed the death of his younger brother, Nick, aged 60 on Boxing Day last year. “It really hit me. That was really hard because I just wanted to grieve for my little brother. And music gave me a place to go to escape from all of that,” he said.
When questioned about the decline of music on the school curriculum, he said: “I think we’ve let music, creatives and art slip too much. It is a concern that the numbers have gone down. I think to be fair we need to signal what an A-level in music might give to you.”
He also said the government was determined to ease some of the problems created by Brexit that meant British musicians were finding it difficult to tour in Europe.
“It’s had a huge inhibiting effect. And I genuinely don’t think anybody voted in that referendum, whether they voted to remain or to leave, to make it harder for musicians and artists to be able to perform in other countries,” he said.
“I absolutely understand the urgency and the need for this, and I’m absolutely determined that we will do whatever we can to make it easier.”
