As election nears, who are the UK party leaders vying for power?

The UK goes to the polls on July 4 to elect a new government. There are 650 individual battles to become members of parliament, but most eyes are on the race to become Prime Minister and live in London's famous 10 Downing Street residence. 

Realistically there are only two potential Prime Ministers - incumbent Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer. But the likes of Ed Davey and Nigel Farage are also important, along with other political leaders. 

But who are the party leaders? What's their backstory? And what are their strengths and weaknesses?

Let's start with the overwhelming favorite......

KEIR STARMER (LABOUR)

Background

During the second televised election leaders' debate, audience laughter was palpable as Starmer mentioned for the umpteenth time during the campaign that his father was a toolmaker.

Starmer was momentarily unnerved by the mirth - a reaction usually experienced by his beleaguered opposite number Sunak. But he may have reflected later how such a negative reaction was in fact a positive, showing that the message about his humble working class roots had finally got through to voters after four years.

As a former high-flying lawyer, the Labour leader has long been criticized by opponents for being part of an ill-defined gilded 'liberal elite' when in fact he possesses a backstory most aspiring politicians would die for. 

According to leading British political journalist Andrew Rawnsley, Starmer "has a more working-class background than any Labour leader for a generation." Brought up in what Rawnsley calls "a cramped, ramshackle pebble-dashed semi", Starmer was the first in his family to attend university. 

His mother Jo's lifelong Still's disease, resulting in lengthy hospital treatments and eventual leg amputation, meant the young Starmer shouldering caring responsibilities while still a teenager. His father Rodney was, as mentioned, a toolmaker working in a factory.

Starmer went on to achieve huge success as a lawyer, rising to become first a queen's counsel (senior barrister chosen to serve as counsel to the crown), and later Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the third most senior public prosecutor in England and Wales. He was awarded a knighthood in 2014.

Married with two children, Starmer guards his family's privacy jealously. Despite riding high in the polls and seemingly set for victory, his popularity levels have been far lower than Tony Blair in the build-up to his famous 1997 election win. Blair remains the only Labour leader since 1974 to have won a general election, but Starmer looks odds-on to break that half-century of solitude. 

Career in politics

Starmer became MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015 and took the Labour leadership less than five years later after the disastrous election defeat suffered by leftwing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. 

Having served as Labour's spokesperson for exiting the European Union under Corbyn, Starmer has faced predictable attacks from opponents that he was close to a politician widely disliked by the type of voters Labour needs to win to regain power after 14 years in the wilderness.

Yet Starmer has ditched many of Corbyn's 2019 election and has even been instrumental in barring him from standing for Labour again. Corbyn's decision to stand for election as an independent has arguably delighted Starmer's advisors, underlining his claim to have '"changed the Labour Party.'"

Despite widespread accusations of having a charisma bypass, Starmer's leadership has been ruthless, banishing leftwing opponents and moving Labour to the political center. Some commentators believe he may have to soften his unforgiving stance in power or risk the fracturing of his governing coalition.

Then we have the current Prime Minister....

RISHI SUNAK (CONSERVATIVE)

Background

Born in Southampton in 1980 to Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent, Sunak has spoken often of his father Yashvir's career as a doctor and his mother running a local pharmacy, citing this as evidence of his commitment to the UK's National Health Service.

But Sunak's privileged education at one of the country's leading private schools Winchester College, where annual fees are currently $62,500, have sparked accusations that he is out of touch with voters.

Before entering politics, Sunak worked as a Goldman Sachs analyst and hedge fund partner at TCI. Labour has sought without much success to link Sunak to a 2009 admission by his boss Chris Hohn to a parliamentary select committee that their fund had bet against British banks during the 2008 financial crash.

Sunak's marriage to Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian billionaire, means he is one of parliament's richest MPs, with a fortune estimated at £651m ($828 million). 

The revelation that Sunak's wife's non-domiciled status meant she did not pay tax on all her international earnings caused controversy, but her agreement to end that arrangement somewhat neutralized the issue. 

Career in politics

Despite being 17 years younger than rival Starmer, Sunak joined parliament at the same 2015 election and quickly rose up the ranks. 

In February 2020, aged just 39, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), barely a month before the country entered lockdown as the Covid-19 pandemic hit its shores.  

With a reputation as a technocrat, Sunak was pragmatic enough to recognize that the devastating economic impact of lockdown meant his 'small-state' Thatcherite instincts could worsen the crisis - arguably the greatest faced by a UK government since World War II. 

His decision to introduce a furlough scheme was credited with saving millions of jobs, making him for a time the most popular politician in the UK.

After the implosion of Boris Johnson's premiership in July 2022, hastened by a 'partygate' scandal over drunken Downing Street gatherings in breach of Covid lockdown regulations, Sunak seemed set for the top job. Yet he was defeated in the final runoff by insurgent Liz Truss, with the Conservatives' mainly elderly members blaming his resignation from cabinet for helping bring down their darling Johnson.

But less than two months later he found himself in Downing Street after Truss's jaw-dropping mini-budget offering unfunded tax cuts led to a run on sterling and a freefall in the UK gilt market. His backers saw Sunak as a safe pair of hands who could restore Britain's credibility with investors, so at 42 he became Britain's first person of colour to lead the country - and the youngest in more than 200 years.

Sunak's leadership has been beset with difficulties from the start. He was bequeathed a toxic inheritance of squeezed living standards, over-stretched public services and a Conservative Party still at war with itself in the aftermath of Brexit.

However, his apparent lack of political savvy and callow advisory team - highlighted by his much-criticized decision to leave international D-Day surroundings in Normandy early -  has added to the sense that his premiership is bound to end in heavy defeat.

And then there's the rest.....

Other Leaders:

ED DAVEY (LIBERAL DEMOCRATS)

Davey's childhood was extremely difficult. His father John died of cancer when Davey was four years old and he became a carer for his terminally ill mother Nina until her death when he was 15, leaving him orphaned. 

Subsequently brought up by his maternal grandparents, Davey attended Oxford University and married fellow Liberal Democrat member Emily Gasson in 2005.

He became an MP at 32 in 1997 and has stayed there since, apart from two years between 2015 and 2017. The hiatus occurred after he had lost his seat when the Liberal Democrats were punished at the polls by the electorate for their role in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, losing most of their seats. 

Davey became leader in 2020. His 17-year-old son has an undiagnosed neurological condition meaning he cannot walk or talk and Davey spends much of his spare time caring for him. This experience has undoubtedly influenced his public campaign for improved social care. He also has a daughter.

Davey served as postal affairs minister and then energy secretary during David Cameron's coalition government. The former role has seen him face uncomfortable questions over the Post Office scandal, widely regarded as the UK's largest miscarriage of justice. 

He's been widely praised for his sense of fun on the campaign trail, which included being photographed falling off a paddle board, sliding down a waterslide and riding a rollercoaster.

NIGEL FARAGE (REFORM UK)

Farage is the closest politician the notoriously non-ideological UK has to the blustering populism of much of Europe. 

A private school boy who helped champion Britain's departure from the EU, Farage helped sell Brexit to millions of voters in England and Wales who felt ignored by the main Conservative and Labour parties. Despite his expensive education and career as a commodities trader, Farage has cultivated an image of an anti-establishment figure. 

Reform is less of a political party, more of a privately funded company, but is standing in most UK constituencies. Until early in the campaign its leader was Richard Tice but at a news conference on June 3 - almost two weeks after the election was called - Farage announced he was now leader of the anti-immigrant group.

STEPHEN FLYNN (SCOTTISH NATIONALIST PARTY)

The SNP is the third largest grouping in parliament, having won an impressive 48 of Scotland's 59 seats in 2019. Yet a series of political scandals and growing criticism over its 18-year rule in Scotland's devolved legislature have made problems for Flynn. 

While in his teens, the 35-year-old leader suffered from a painful condition called avascular necrosis, which causes the death of bone tissue due to a lack of blood supply, but now walks unaided. Elected to Westminster in 2019, he became leader just three years later. 

In Scotland's devolved assembly in Edinburgh the party's leader is John Swinney. 

Other major leaders: 

Carla Denyer & Adrian Ramsay (Green)

Gavin Robinson (Democratic Unionists)

Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru)

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