Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, nodded sympathetically as a young mother recalled, in harrowing terms, how she had watched closed-circuit television footage of the fatal stabbing of her 21-year-old son, whose heart was pierced with a single blow. “Thank you for that,” a somber Mr. Starmer said to the woman and other relatives of victims of knife attacks, as they stood around a wooden table last week, discussing ways to combat violent crime. “It’s really, really powerful.”It was not the most feel-good campaign event for a candidate the week before an election that his opposition party is widely expected to win. But it was entirely in character for Mr. Starmer, a 61-year-old former human rights lawyer who still behaves less like a politician than a prosecutor bringing a case. Earnest, intense, practical and not brimming with charisma, Mr. Starmer finds himself on the cusp of a potential landslide victory without the star quality that marked previous British leaders on the doorstep of power, whether Margaret Thatcher, the 1980s free-market champion, or Tony Blair, the avatar of “Cool Britannia.”
