Keir Starmer has a surprising connection to the forthcoming Channel 4 drama, Deceit.
The series follows the infamous honey-trap investigation that saw an undercover policewoman, code-named “Lizzie James” and played by Niamh Algar, used as sexual bait to catch Colin Stagg, the man who police wrongly believed had killed Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992.
It also stars Eddie Marsan as Paul Britton who, in the Nineties, was Britain’s most famous criminal profiler and who was asked by police to assist them in their covert operation, code-named Operation Ezdell, to see whether they could elicit a confession from Stagg.
After Stagg was charged and the case against him was dropped, Stagg’s lawyers submitted a complaint about Britton to his professional body, the British Psychological Society. Britton was represented at the 2002 hearing by none other than Starmer QC, who successfully argued that the charges should be dropped because of the eight-year delay.
After studying law in the Eighties at Oxford and qualifying for the bar, Starmer was a defence lawyer, specialising in human rights issues as a member of Doughty Street Chambers, before being appointed as a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 2002.
In 2008, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), holding these roles until 2013. He entered politics in 2015.
