Where is the Prime Minister’s wife? The truth behind why Victoria Starmer has chosen to be invisible

It’s exactly a year since Keir Starmer got the keys to Downing Street. Three hundred and sixty-five days since I stood at my local polling station in Kentish Town and saw Keir and his Me+Em-clad wife Victoria Starmer do the customary voting shot on election morning. It was quite the media scrum here in NW5 – the community centre at one of the local council estates, which usually hosts mum-and-baby singing or drop-ins, was besieged by the world’s press.

It’s funny when the media circus descends on somewhere you know so well; our prime minister and his wife are good north London citizens, sending their kids to local schools. I often saw Victoria at Tufnell Park station (Kentish Town was closed for a year for refurbishment). In her elegant trouser suits and long bob, she had a very north London working mum aesthetic. She fitted in just fine.

A year ago, I wrote about how I hoped Victoria would be a new kind of “first lady” – one who bucked the traditional trend of buy-one-get-one-free political wives. It’s amazing how many consort occupants of Downing Street have made being “Mrs Prime Minister” their primary identity. Lest we forget Cherie Blair, with her stylist Carole Caplin, being photographed in her Downing Street bedroom applying lip gloss. Or Samantha Cameron, who released shots of her trendified Downing Street flat with its LOVE pillows, on-trend DVD box sets (remember those?) and OKA shelving.

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As the first official consort occupant not to be married to her PM partner, Carrie Johnson courted a deluge of media attention for her luxury Lulu Lytle makeover of No 11, lockdown parties, and extravagant tastes. Even Mrs Rishi Sunak was proudly paraded everywhere from Yorkshire to global summits, discussing loading the dishwasher and pretending she was just like the rest of us – despite being one of the world’s richest women.

By contrast, Lady Starmer, a former solicitor and proud occupational health professional, has flown almost entirely under the radar over the past 12 months. Fiercely private about the family’s home life, she’s not one to do a sit-down interview with a glossy magazine. When she did grace the cover of Tatler, the profile had to be stitched together from quotes by those close to her. Described as a “spectral presence” whom many in Labour circles have never met, friends were said to be “terrified of saying much about Victoria – even when it was complimentary”.

In the past year, Victoria Starmer has only appeared fleetingly at a handful of official events. She was there to turn on Downing Street’s Christmas lights, at an 80th anniversary celebration of VE Day, and during an emotional return to Auschwitz for a Holocaust memorial. We also saw her at a Taylor Swift Eras tour concert, in the Wimbledon Royal Box, and at the Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral.

While Keir Starmer told The Observer that, after the row over accepting expensive gifts – including tickets to see Swift with his family – what really upset him was his wife being dubbed “Lady Victoria Sponger”, her disappearing act is certainly not a case of having a thin skin, but more a positive and empowered decision by Victoria to just do things differently.

If there is a normal life to be had in Downing Street (where they live in the larger flat at No 11), Victoria has seemingly achieved the impossible and managed it. Her husband generally avoids having meetings or drinks with colleagues back at the flat, so it’s kept very much as a family zone – just like their home in Kentish Town. With no interest in being a public figure, Lady Vic has had a year of simply nipping off to work, looking after her teenage children, and mostly staying well away from photo calls or wifely appearances to soften her husband’s image.

Of course, nature abhors a vacuum – and just like with the Princess of Wales, Victoria’s lack of public profile has led to some pretty wild speculation about their marriage. But wisely, instead of attending to these vicious lies, Victoria has brushed off any malicious gossip, preferring to defuse rumours through quiet and steady support behind closed doors.

And it feels very refreshing to have a PM’s spouse who is doing an ordinary gig in the NHS, feeding back the reality of life on the ground, instead of sacrificing her independence to swan around with other political spouses at G7 summits. As a highly intelligent and photogenic woman, she is a potent and valuable asset to her husband. But even more important – to the rest of womankind – is her refusal to be used as a Wag trophy or to publicly play a part in a power couple. This matters. For centuries, it’s been assumed that men who take big jobs – whether as ambassadors abroad or as top politicians – will have a wife who comes as part of the BOGOF package: providing social oil, hosting dinners, remembering names, and making everyone feel welcome and looked after.

Given the dire state of never-here-Keir’s current standing within the Labour Party (how did a PM with a landslide majority read his backbenchers’ mood so badly he ended up having to torpedo his own disability benefit reform bill to avoid a humiliating defeat?), I don’t doubt the pressure could be on his wife to change the mood – to appear in public, to show her husband in a more positive light.

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Even the incomparable Michelle Obama was called upon to introduce Barack, talking about how she loved him despite his stinky socks and late-night almond habit (he would never eat more than seven nuts). Such wives were expected to work like Trojans behind the scenes to prop up the husband’s public role. (Anyone else remember Norma Major and her publicly paraded frozen grated cheese in Tupperware to make John Major seem more relatable and thrifty? Or even Mr May, wheeled out in shots of their annual walking holiday in the Swiss Alps to try and convince us that Theresa was human after all?)

But Lady Vic has said goodbye to all that. Everything about her suggests that she will stick to her guns and resist being trotted out to improve Keir’s standing with the public. Letting her husband get on with the job, while she gets on with hers, is what she does best. And she should be applauded for sticking to her principles – keeping her kids out of the spotlight and carrying on as normal, even when it’s not really normal at all. Something I was reminded of yesterday as I walked down the street where the Starmer family home was firebombed in May.

The charred brickwork was a stark example of the high personal cost that political families pay for being in the public eye. It’s Vic’s sister who lives there now, and she was upstairs with her partner when the front door was set alight. “She happened to still be awake,” Keir told his biographer last month, “so she heard the noise and got the fire brigade. But it could have been a different story.”

Vic is all too aware of the dangers in a highly polarised world. I vividly remember pro-Palestinian groups leaving piles of children’s shoes outside the Starmer home and demonstrating against Keir’s policies on our high street. No doubt she has had bile thrown at her family because of her Jewish roots and faith. Last month marked nine years since Labour MP Jo Cox – a beloved wife and mother – was murdered in her constituency, stabbed 15 times. The risk is real; many senior politicians receive near-daily death threats.

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In such a highly charged, toxic environment, Victoria’s conviction to stay firmly below the parapet is entirely understandable and sensible. The risk to her teenage kids (whom Keir has said he wants to be able to walk to school and live their own lives – we don’t even know the name of their younger child) is real. We should be pleased that Victoria has resisted the kind of family photo calls beloved of the Blairs, Camerons, or even the Browns. Today, there are no halfway houses. You either play the publicity game – or you totally don’t.

Instead, Vic has pursued her own independence, protecting herself and her kids in the process. Their dad has chosen to be PM—the rest of the family hasn’t. She has honoured their commitment to staying out of the limelight.

As we hit the first anniversary of the first family moving into Downing Street – well done, Lady Vic. You’ve played a blinder.