Hear about Keir Starmer from his friend and former colleague Patrick

I've described him in the past as you know he is completely ordinary and completely extraordinary he's just a really good bloke you know he likes to go down the pub he likes to have a drink he likes to go to football um and you know he likes to play football and I liked all of those things a couple of times when he was short on a

Sunday he'd invite me to come make the numbers up on the team and we'd play football in kandish town a couple of times when he had a spare ticket for Arsenal he'd invite me along even though I'm a staunch Crystal Palace supporter care is a passionate footballer he is extremely competitive takes it very seriously and I think he can best be described as a Midfield General

the country do every Sunday and yeah he's just one of the guys you know one of the lads on the pitch and um and he gets stuck in and he gives it and he gets it back and everybody's just completely equal on a pitch it's great and there's all sorts of people there there's people that he's known for 30 years um as somebody who came along

three weeks ago because they were short and he was somebody's mate's mate and he's playing and you know as long as you're you know past the test of being a decent bloke and it's not so much about how good you are at football it's more about you're a decent bloke and you want a pint afterwards then you're in first thing I would say about care is

he was a great leader he brought the best out of everybody um that he worked with I first met Kia when I was a prosecutor on the cancer terrorism division at the crown prosecution service and I needed to have an expert opinion from a human rights lawyer when he was appointed the director of public prosecutions and I just recently been made the head of the international

division of the crown prosecution service care was incredibly collaborative he was a team player he always knew his brief better than everybody else including those of us who might have written them I felt that he was someone that I could speak openly to which for any senior leader is not always the case for the leader of a very large establishment organization it's certainly not always the

case I think here would be a fantastic prime minister he most importantly will do two things for me the first is he will restore trust in public office that's a huge statement it's a huge task and of course there'll be many people that will never trust and there'll be a lot who still are skeptical and I'm not surprised after what we've been through but there will

be a lot of people who will see that he is a man of his word he is a man of ability he is a man who will not do things for the sake of doing them he will not do them because they look good he will do them because they're the right thing to do and they will have beneficial impact he's always tried to do things

that make things better no matter how difficult they are and no matter how difficult they are for him I think he had plenty of friends when he was going into politics who turned around to him close friends and said why would you want to do that you know you're one of the leading human rights lawyers of your generation you could earn an absolute Fortune at the

bar you could do all this amazing work why would you put yourself through this he believes quite clearly that you've got to try and make a difference and you've got to try and do it in the most effective way