The Curious Religiosity Of One Keir Starmer

Perhaps the most renowned passage of Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship & The Heroic in History opens with the decree that ‘a man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him’, a proposition through which Carlyle elucidates how an individual’s true faith often lies outwith their professed church creed. Separate from the divine teachings of any sect, Carlyle instead argued that an individual’s true religious persuasion lies in the set of core beliefs which they hold sacred; a central guiding philosophy, and one that exercises supreme authority over both their actions and character. For the openly irreligious Keir Starmer, Carlyle’s reasoning would cast the Prime Minister’s seemingly stringent adherence to international law as a surrogate for faith in the traditional sense. 

It requires little investigation to verify this claim, a brief listen to Starmer on the Chagos Islands and one will find themselves suitably versed in the liturgy. The United Kingdom, he insists, must surrender its 212-year sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius, lest its continued possession of the Indian-Ocean territory undermine Britain’s international legal standing and likely result in the legally-enforced loss of the Islands in the near future. The controversial treaty, which transfers UK sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius while leasing back the strategically vital UK-US military base of Diego Garcia for 99 years (at the paltry cost of some £3.4 billion) has stalled in the House of Lords, while incurring the chagrin of US President Trump who lambasted the deal as an act of ‘great stupidity’.

While a polarised press, public, Parliament, and now, President, have projected framings of the deal which vary from an act of reparative justice (Britain seized the subjugated colony from Napoleon’s France in 1814) to an act of national self-harm, Starmer has treated the affair as something closer to confession.

Maybe this stance is understandable; the legal case against Britain has been stacked for years. Mauritius has engaged Westminster in a protracted legal battle in International Courts for sovereignty over the Islands since the 1980s, while 2019 saw the International Court of Justice advise that the UK’s separation of Chagos from Mauritius, then the French colony of Île-de-France, during decolonisation was an unlawful act which warrants Britain’s relinquishing of the archipelago ‘as rapidly as possible’. This opinion was warmly received by the United Nations General Assembly, which subsequently called for the UK’s prompt withdrawal.

The Chagos affair, which Starmer saw pertinent enough to amend that it became a focal point of the UK’s foreign policy within the first 100 days of his premiership, despite the significant political flak he has amassed throughout, is not detached from the image of legal respectability Starmer has carefully curated throughout his career. Prior to politics, Starmer, an honourable Knight of the realm and former Head of Public Prosecutions, had represented a tapestry of clients at the European Court of Human Rights, acted as a human rights advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, and in 2014, argued for Croatia in genocide hearings before the International Court of Justice.

Starmer has sought to carry this foundational philosophy over to his Prime Ministership, a précis illuminated by the litany of decisions his government has justified primarily through the black and white partitions provided by international law. Scrapping the Conservative Party’s controversial UK- Rwanda ‘asylum partnership arrangement’ and initially preventing the US from launching strikes from UK military bases on Iran in February 2026 both owed to legal considerations, while Richard Hermer KC, a prominent human rights lawyer, was elevated to the post of Attorney General by Starmer and marked the beginning of his tenure by stating that a commitment to international law ‘goes absolutely to the heart’ of the government's approach to foreign policy.

Yet if Carlyle is right, if a man’s religion is indeed the chief fact, then less attention should be paid to instances of theological fidelity and more to the moments when his adherence to dogma becomes interpretive; precisely because the international law which Starmer excitedly invokes in the case of Chagos, Iran, and Rwanda commands far less sway when the subject turns to Israel and other instances where its upholding would prove far more politically precarious.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice deemed it ‘plausible’ that Israel, a recipient of hundreds of arms export licences from the UK, stood in violation of the Genocide Convention, while a United Nations commission of inquiry determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted a genocide in a September 2025 ruling. The muted response of the Labour government to these judgements, which peaked in September 2024 when the UK suspended a mere 30 out of 350 total arms export licences to Israel, exhibited signs of fracture in the Prime Minister’s sterling devotion to international law. 

Consider, if you will, the contrast; on Chagos, international law is presented as a strict parent, Britain must do the right thing no matter how strategically and monetarily costly, precisely because international law demands so. On Israel however, international law is hurriedly recast as the drunken and ever-so-slightly embarrassing relative at dinner; acknowledged, placated and then quickly ushered away when the conversation pivots to politics.

What matters here is not whether the occurrence of genocide in Gaza is an objective truth, but Starmer’s contrasting responses to decrees of the same organisations in relation to different circumstances. When the issue is Chagos, both the United Nations and the International Court of Justice are bastions of truth, whose judgements must be respected no matter the national cost incurred, yet in the case of Israel, rulings of the very same organisations slide into the realm of suggestion.

This legal inconsistency is not limited to Israel. Throughout his premiership, Starmer has repeatedly argued for reforms to the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Refugee Convention, which would facilitate the forced deportation of foreign criminals and unsuccessful asylum seekers from the UK. Starmer has also lobbied fellow European leaders to help him implement reforms to the ECHR despite participating in ardent defences of the treaty against the UK government in his previous capacity as a Queen’s Council.

Both Israel and attempted reforms to the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention can be traced to Starmer’s desperate scramble to ensure his party’s continued electoral support, and inseparably, his own legitimacy. To oppose Israel by stripping Tel Aviv of arms exports would uphold international law, but would likely alienate Britain from key allies, Labour from sections of an electorate whose support it is already hemorrhaging, and result in Starmer’s vicious lampooning from an array of media outlets. Similar motives are present in the Prime Minister’s desire to reform the ECHR and UN Refugee Convention. Immigration has become a focal point of British Politics. While Labour’s immigration policy has contributed to the party shedding support in its traditional heartlands, Reform UK, Labour’s chief electoral rival, has shored up support from the Labour base through its own proposed hardline stance on the matter.

Here lies the cognitive dissonance of Keir Starmer’s theological fidelity; what, in practice, is he actually willing to lose for his proclaimed faith? A religion that costs nothing is simply a veil and Chagos, for all of its controversy, is the sort of costly that Starmer can rationalise. The legal case is clear, Diego Garcia is secured through a long-term lease and Britain can strut around internationally with the peacock feather of post-imperial responsibility in its hat, while Starmer himself is allowed to pose as the dutiful servant of the higher power that is international law. Even the political pain incurred can be contorted and presented as a virtue, proof that this Prime Minister is governed by rules rather than the rabble and lingering national sentiment of old.

Israel presents the opposite; a domain where legal consistency could easily result in abject political suicide. For Starmer to faithfully follow the logic he extols elsewhere, he must embrace consequences that could rupture alliances, split Parliament, fracture the electorate and invite a press and opposition hungry to forward the narrative of betrayal. Such a circumstance would require Starmer to risk the glue of moderation that keeps his premiership intact, and so legalism is quickly (and quietly) reduced to mere hedging; the expression of concern without rupture, condemnation without action and suspension without embargo. The Prime Minister is allowed to praise his god while simultaneously withholding the sacrifice it is owed.

This primal drive for political survival is again visible in Starmer’s flirtation with reform to both the ECHR and UN Refugee Convention. It is not that issues pertaining to borders and deportations are necessarily illegitimate policy concerns, it is that the Labour Leader’s posture (which previously saw him don the armour of an ardent defender of asylum seekers in his legal opposition to the UK’s Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act in 2003) flops whenever political winds turn. When legality is convenient, Starmer will proudly brandish the creed and resolutely reaffirm its objectivity, yet when legality becomes an obstructive force that threatens electoral support, he discovers a remarkable interpretive flexibility. For Keir Starmer, international law represents not an objective compass, but a simple credential; one that is to be wielded or subverted whenever popularity polls necessitate so.

Thomas Carlyle wanted heroes whose inner convictions governed them no matter the weight of inconvenience their decisions would incur, yet Starmer’s convictions appear less based in international law and more in a desperate quest for sustained legitimacy regardless of the cost. While legal respectability represents the Prime Minister’s professed creed, and one he recites with a lawyer’s careful cadence, a palpable desire to ensure survival lies underneath the murky waters of Starmer’s political modus operandi, embodying his true religion and one which he practices in the deceitful manner that only a politician can. Such is the essence of Keir Starmer’s curious religiosity; the law is sacred - until the very moment it asks him to bleed.

Image: Flickr/No 10 Downing Street (Lauren Hurley)

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