The landslide victory of the U.K.’s self-proclaimed “socialist” new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer — a longtime lawyer before wading into politics in his 50s — will put his promise of “change” to the test.

Ahead of the July 4 snap election, he ran on not only transforming the future of the U.K., but on a promise that the Labour Party itself had changed under his leadership since he took over the party in 2020.

“I know there are countless people who haven’t decided how they’ll vote in this election. They’re fed up with the failure, chaos and division of the Tories, but they still have questions about us: has Labour changed enough?,”the 61-year old acknowledged in a speech in May, as BBC reported. “Do I trust them with my money, our borders, our security? My answer is yes, you can, because I have changed this party permanently.” 

He sees the prospect of a Labour Party win as a chance to “make Britain serious again,” he told the Financial Times ahead of the election. “There is a degree of steadfast seriousness that is much needed across the country.”

He also finds his “Sir” title distracting from his true background, he said in the same interview, noting “it’s important for me to remind people that my dad was a toolmaker and my mum was a nurse.” 

The win will also provide a chance for the Labour Party to show whether it has moved past much of the antisemitism that notoriously stained it during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure when he was the party’s head before Mr. Starmer took over in 2020. “The first thing I said as Labour Leader is that I would tear antisemitism out of our party by the roots, that was my first solemn promise, and I’ve followed through on that,” he told SkyNews earlier this year. 

He has warned of antisemitism taking “a new shape” following the October 7 massacres and has promised to “never let antisemitism sneak back into the Labour Party under cover.” Ahead of the election, Mr. Starmer’s platform appeared to sway some Jewish voters, as one poll even indicated that 46 percent of British Jews were planning to vote for the Labour Party, more than the 42 percent of the general population that said it would do the same. 

Many of Mr. Starmer’s wife’s family are Jewish, and he told the Guardian that the October 7 massacres had affected relatives living in Israel. Yet he has also said that it is “extremely important” that Palestine should be recognized as a state, noting that “we need a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel, and recognition has to be part of that.”