Who is Victoria Starmer? The low profile former Cardiff University president who now lives in No 10

After Sir Keir Starmer's historic landslide in the general election last week, his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer, now finds herself living a whole new life inside No 10. While the 49-year-old may have kept a relatively low profile during the election campaign, she was involved in politics long before meeting her husband as student union president at Cardiff University and through volunteering at Tony Blair's campaign headquarters in 1997.

Lady Starmer, then known as Vicky Alexander, was born to Jewish parents in north London. She studied law and sociology at Cardiff University where she was elected to be student union president in 1994.

As union president, she campaigned to ward off anti-union laws and took a strong position against the government's cuts to student grants. It means Sir Keir is not the first in his family to campaign against a Conservative government's policies.

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Victoria's law background was also how she met Sir Keir in the early 2000s, when they worked on a case together. Their relationship didn't get off to the best of starts however when the now Prime Minister, as the senior barrister in the case, rang Victoria who was working as a solicitor to grill her on the accuracy of the documents she provided. As he was hanging up, he told ITV's Piers Morgan's Life Stories: "I overheard Vic saying to a colleague, 'who the **** does he think he is?'" They later married in 2007 at the Fennes estate in Essex.

Lady Starmer now works in an NHS hospital as an occupational therapist. On her job in the NHS, Sir Keir told the Sunday Mirror: "She loves working for the NHS. She loves the team that she's working with [...] I get a direct line of sight on a daily basis into the challenges of the NHS and the morale of the staff."

In the lead up to the election, Lady Starmer largely stayed out of the spotlight and did not join her husband on the campaign trail. The couple were spotted at Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in London as Sir Keir shared a photograph of the pair to his Instagram. Join our WhatsApp news community here for the latest breaking news.

Sir Keir has spoken of his wife's desire to remain private. He told The Times: "She wants to get on with her life. She doesn't want to push herself into the limelight. Vic's never done an interview, and we'll keep it that way because we want that boundary."

Lady Starmer has two children with Sir Keir, a girl who is 13 and a boy of 15, but they have chosen to keep their names and faces out of the media. He told ITV's This Morning about the worries he had for his children if he were to win the election, saying: "I can see deep down they’re worried this [their lives] could change, which is why we will fiercely protect their privacy".