Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

New­ly elect­ed Unit­ed King­dom Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer, KC, has a long-stand­ing con­nec­tion with T&T stretch­ing back al­most three decades from his work as a lead­ing hu­man rights ad­vo­cate.

In the late 1990s, Starmer was among a group of UK at­tor­neys who lent their ex­per­tise to lo­cal le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies and their ju­nior at­tor­neys pur­su­ing cas­es chal­leng­ing the death penal­ty and hu­man rights is­sues in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

When Starmer ap­plied to be a Queen’s Coun­sel in 2002, he sought a rec­om­men­da­tion from now-de­ceased Se­nior Coun­sel Desmond Al­lum, with whom he worked on sev­er­al cas­es.

For­mer Law As­so­ci­a­tion vice pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Per­sad, SC, who now heads Al­lum Cham­bers, re­count­ed his ex­pe­ri­ences with Starmer, a found­ing mem­ber and con­sul­tant at the law firm he now heads.

“Keir Starmer was part of a team of Eng­lish lawyers who were ad­vo­cat­ing fair tri­al rights for pris­on­ers in the Caribbean and were ba­si­cal­ly work­ing on chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty in the re­gion,” he said.

“It was a ve­hi­cle by which Caribbean lawyers would come, meet and work with the Eng­lish lawyers to en­sure that per­sons who were be­ing pros­e­cut­ed for mur­der were go­ing to get the best lev­els of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in keep­ing with fun­da­men­tal fair­ness and Eu­ro­pean hu­man rights stan­dards.”

De­scrib­ing Starmer as mea­sured, pro­por­tion­ate and strate­gic, Per­sad added: “He would take an ar­gu­ment and just break it down limb by limb.”

Per­sad not­ed that be­fore his life in UK pol­i­tics, Starmer helped au­thor Black­stone’s Hu­man Rights Di­gest, which be­came the lead­ing le­gal text­book on hu­man rights in the Com­mon­wealth.

“He had not on­ly the abil­i­ty to be strate­gic and ar­tic­u­late but he had a large knowl­edge base which made him a for­mi­da­ble ad­vo­cate,” he said.

Per­sad re­count­ed how Starmer ap­peared along­side him and Al­lum in Al­lum’s first case be­fore the UK-based Privy Coun­cil where they chal­lenged the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion af­ford­ed to Ann-Marie Boodram, who was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing her hus­band by poi­son­ing in 1994.

“That was a land­mark case. The tri­al coun­sel had failed to rep­re­sent the woman prop­er­ly and the case talked about the com­pe­tence of coun­sel,” he said.

Per­sad not­ed that while serv­ing as the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) of Eng­land and Wales, Starmer was in­vit­ed to give a lec­ture en­ti­tled: “Must the pros­e­cu­tion of crime be at the ex­pense of hu­man rights?”

“We were try­ing to get across to peo­ple that you can pros­e­cute peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly, yet strike a bal­ance with hu­man rights. It was an im­por­tant top­ic and it (the lec­ture) was re­al­ly over­sub­scribed,” he ex­plained.

Per­sad not­ed that Starmer’s work on lo­cal cas­es was not lim­it­ed to ad­vo­ca­cy be­fore the Privy Coun­cil as he al­so led cas­es be­fore the High Court, in­clud­ing ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against busi­ness­man Ish Gal­barans­ingh (now de­ceased) for cor­rup­tion charges aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“I re­mem­ber in the stages of the ex­tra­di­tion, Keir led me on be­half of Ish Gal­barans­ingh. He would have come and been in­volved lo­cal­ly and would have ap­peared in the High Court,” Per­sad said.

Per­sad al­so point­ed out that Starmer did cas­es with King’s Coun­sel Ed­ward Fitzger­ald, with whom he joint­ly head­ed Doughty Street Cham­bers and who con­tin­ues to fre­quent­ly ap­pear in lo­cal cas­es.

“Ed­ward and Keir were like a tag team. To­geth­er they were for­mi­da­ble. What made them so great was Ed­ward had his style and Keir was the op­po­site,” he said.

He re­vealed that Al­lum pro­vid­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion when Starmer ap­plied for “silk”.

“Mr Al­lum was pre­dom­i­nant­ly a lo­cal lawyer but had a prac­tice in Lon­don. He was high­ly re­gard­ed. If it wasn’t for Mr Al­lum I would not have been in­tro­duced to Keir,” he said.

Per­sad not­ed that Starmer’s name is still list­ed on a sign at the front of his cham­bers at Shine Street in Port-of-Spain, which is named af­ter his le­gal men­tor.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, al­so re­count­ed his ex­pe­ri­ences with Starmer.

“I have had the dis­tinct priv­i­lege and plea­sure of work­ing in T&T and on Privy Coun­cil work on hu­man rights and death penal­ty cas­es with re­cent­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer, SC, when he and I were both ju­nior bar­ris­ters,” Ar­mour said.

“He is bright and hard-work­ing, a com­plete pro­fes­sion­al and of the ut­most in­tegri­ty,” he added.

Ar­mour said he planned to send Starmer a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage.

“I will be send­ing to him my warm per­son­al con­grat­u­la­tions and that of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T through the UK High Com­mis­sion Of­fice in Port-of-Spain, wish­ing him well and as­sur­ing him of my every as­sis­tance in my ca­pac­i­ty as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al,” he said.

“The peo­ple of the Unit­ed King­dom are in very good hands un­der his lead­er­ship.”

Starmer, the son of a nurse and a tool­mak­er, was born in 1962.

In 1987, Starmer was called to the bar. In 1990, Starmer was among the found­ing mem­bers of Doughty Street Cham­bers and spe­cialised in hu­man rights, in­ter­na­tion­al law, ju­di­cial re­view, ex­tra­di­tion, crim­i­nal law, po­lice law and me­dia law.

Be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and head of the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice in 2008, Starmer ap­peared in nu­mer­ous hu­man rights and death penal­ty cas­es in the Com­mon­wealth in­clud­ing T&T.

Af­ter his term end­ed, Starmer suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the 2015 UK gen­er­al elec­tion se­cur­ing the Hol­born and St Pan­cras con­stituen­cy in Lon­don.

He served as an MP and held shad­ow min­is­te­r­i­al roles be­fore be­ing elect­ed head of the Labour Par­ty af­ter its re­sound­ing de­feat in the 2019 gen­er­al elec­tion.

He spent al­most four and a half years as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion be­fore lead­ing the par­ty to a land­slide vic­to­ry over the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty in Thurs­day’s elec­tion.

Starmer met his wife Vic­to­ria Alexan­der, a so­lic­i­tor, in the ear­ly 2000s while they were work­ing on the same case. They have two chil­dren to­geth­er.