By the end of the week, Keir Starmer could be the UK’s next prime minister. Why do voters feel they don’t know him?

Polls say Keir Starmer’s Labour party is on track for a historic win. Yet despite the turn towards his party, voters don’t seem as convinced by Starmer himself. So who is Keir Starmer and what do we know about the forces that have shaped him?

His biographer Tom Baldwin traces Starmer’s life from his childhood in Surrey with his toolmaker father and nurse mother, through his radical university days to his life as a left-leaning barrister. He examines how taking on the role of director of public prosecutions changed Starmer and what explains what some people have characterised as a sudden move to the centre ground. And he tells Michael Safi how Starmer’s refusal to adhere to a strict political ideology could be a strength.