UK's Labour party leader Starmer receives mixed reactions for Shabbat family time pledge on Fridays

By Mehmet Solmaz

BIRMINGHAM, England (AA) — UK’s main opposition Labour party leader Keir Starmer, who is most likely to be the UK’s next prime minister after Thursday’s election, said he plans to continue spending time with his family on Friday nights.

In a radio interview on Monday, Starmer said: “We’ve had a strategy in place and we’ll try to keep to it, which is to carve out really protected time for the kids, so on a Friday – I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after 6 o’clock, pretty well come what may. There are a few exceptions, but that’s what we do.”

Friday night Shabbat dinners are important in the Jewish faith and Starmer has talked about making sure his children are aware of their heritage.

The Labour leader, whose wife is Jewish, has received harsh criticisms from the Conservatives, with some of them saying that such an approach would make Starmer a “part-time” prime minister while some others suggested he would refuse to go to work if there was an international crisis on a Friday evening.

Speaking to media at a campaign event in Derbyshire, Starmer added that he tries his best to spend Friday nights with his children, wife and her father.

“Her dad’s side of the family is Jewish, as people will appreciate, and we use that for family prayers – not every Friday, but not infrequently.

“All I said was that, on a Friday night, I tend to try and protect that time for my family as protected time for my wife and my kids. Now, of course, I’ve had to work Fridays in the past, I’ll work Fridays in the future.”

Mr Sunak told reporters at a campaign event in Oxfordshire: “Everyone will have their own way of doing this job. I can just tell you, from my experience having done it, that there’s always work to do, there’s always decisions that need to be made. That’s just what the job requires, and that’s what public service is about."

When asked about Starmer’s words, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “There’s always work to do .... and that entails sacrifice”.

“Everyone is going to approach this job in a different way in my experience, there is always work to do. There’s always decisions that need to be made. And, you know, that’s what the job requires. And that is what the prime minister’s job means. That’s what public service is about and the sacrifice that entails,” Sunak said.

The government’s antisemitism adviser John Mann said: “The attack on Keir Starmer for asserting his right to family time on a Friday night, as he has done for many, many years, is so dangerous.

“It’s a very strange thing to attack over. I’m the independent adviser to the prime minister and my advice would be this is not an area to stray into.”

In a column for the Jewish Chronicle, the paper’s former editor Stephen Pollard called the Conservative criticisms “puerile, pathetic and degrading for everyone involved.”

“The Tory party offended us all by attacking Sir Keir Starmer for observing Jewish traditions.”