Thread by @jimrobottom

I wondered whether I would do this, when the time came. But there don’t seem to be many tales of him as a person going round. And, for reasons that will become apparent, I’ll always be grateful. So anyway here it is:

A 🧵on the personal kindness of @Keir_Starmer

When I was in my early 20s at bar school in 2002, after coming home from a death row internship in Jamaica, I started to get sick. Having never been ill, I developed full blown ME/CFS and had to drop out and return to live with my parents. It lasted over 7 years.

My health fluctuated at first. I managed to go back to Jamaica + secure pupillage in 2004 @7BRchambers, but it turns out that isn’t the best treatment for full blown CFS. So I had a huge relapse, + between 2004 and 2007 could only live at home + go for a walk for 20 mins a day.

The odds at this stage weren’t on me becoming a barrister. A 20 min walk a day and then going to bed doesn’t really cut it in most courts. This was annoying, I was desperate to be a barrister. My legal heroes were Ed Fitzgerald KC and Keir Starmer @DoughtyStPublic.

I thought, + still think, that along with the @DeathPenaltyP, stopping the use of the death penalty, in whole areas of the world, 100s off death rows using just your brain, FOR FREE, is a truly incredible thing to achieve.
Much more so than watching more4 +sweating at your mums

Anyway so around 2007 I was getting a bit better, couldn’t work, couldn’t redo bar school, but could go out once every couple of weeks or so to see mates. I met a girl
from New Zealand at the buffalo bar who also happened to be a solicitor. I saw her, casually, a couple of times

She had a mad strong NZ accent and was hilarious. One day she called me up and said ‘James I’m coming to Harrow for a widding with my work frinds. It’s a Hindu widding with a big break. You live there is thir much to do?’ The answer to that q, if you’re wondering is no

So I offered to pick her and her frinds up in my mum’s car and drive them to the only decent pub in Harrow, the case is altered, which has a view, + take them back to the widding. I got to the station + she + her friend Victoria get in the car + a lad in the back.

This is Keir

… she says.

I knew who it was.

I was very nervous. Driving my legal hero round in my mum’s car aged 28, not a great look. Anyway we all go to the pub. Potential v awkward so you’re seeing this girl but live at your mum’s chat. So I just blurt out I know who you are I worked

For Saul and Parvais in Jamaica. Proper ice breaker. Nice enough chat. He asks a lot about my illness and how I am. Men don’t generally do that. So you notice. I was hoping I could still qualify in a couple of years. About to leave he says email me. So a few days later I do.

Classic barrister he doesn’t get back to me for months.

Then out of the blue he emails and says he has to do a speech, for an @ALBA_Members do on 7 years of the Human Rights Act. Do I want to help research it, he will pay me.

Mate you will what?

It’s hard to convey just how much Keir Starmer QC didn’t need to do this at the time. He was absolutely at the top of his game, the top human rights QC taking the top human rights cases against the government. He didn’t know me at all. No cv, hadn’t seen my grades. Nothing.

He used my work, gave me a co-writing credit, and invited me to inner -temple hall for the event. And he paid me, really quite well, for research from a random.

Only those who have had a chronic illness or had close friends or loved ones who have will know the shot of self-esteem that working with him and having my name on that paper gave me, at a time when I really didn’t think I would become a barrister, or really work at all

It was an act of kindness.

I used to say when I was ill most young people are crap if you have a chronic illness. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve never known illness. Every so often you’d meet someone + they would be interested. Ask how you were

It was never the people you expected it to be. they always turned out to have been around loved ones who had been ill, or to have been ill themselves.

I didn’t work for Keir again, but it made a real difference to me, at a very low point in my life. I won’t forget it.

Disclosure: I’ve told this story once before, at an early Kentish Town labour event where his local nomination was voted on. I did so in response to claims he’s a blairite, or lacking personality, or whatever it was. I later left the party to to the greens…

over anti-semitism. I haven’t gone back. I prob will at some stage, it’s a natural home for me.

But it occurs to me that now might be a helpful moment for the people who have got this far without falling asleep, to know about the kindness, in this small case, of Keir Starmer.