His father – as we know – was a toolmaker, and he has spoken often of the pebble-dashed semi where he grew up. But when Keir Starmer addressed the Labour party conference this week it was a less familiar aspect of his childhood that he chose to highlight.
One of the things that had given him “great joy” as a child, “as well as the football, obviously”, was playing the flute, he told delegates in Liverpool. “I don’t think you were expecting that, were you?”
