Lady Victoria Starmer looks effortlessly chic in bright orange sundress as she heads to Ascot without the prime minister
Sir Keir Starmer, 62, will likely be preparing for his talks with US President Donald Trump, who he is expected to meet the prime minister on Monday after a trip to Scotland.
This left Lady Victoria, 52, free to attend the The King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, in Berkshire, on Saturday afternoon.
The rarely seen wife of Sir Keir was dressed for the warmer weather in a bright orange shirt dress, which buttoned through the middle.
She was photographed gleefully cheering on competitors at the racecourse, as the annual King George Racing Weekend got under way.
The mother kept her brunette hair neat for the occasion, tucked simply behind her ears.
She completed her look with very simple make up and wore a charm bracelet on her right wrist.
Lady Victoria has been dubbed a 'reluctant political spouse' in the past - but she always seems to support her husband Sir Keir when it comes to the big occasions.
The glamorous mother-of-two and NHS occupational health worker was snapped in an all-white ensemble as she joined her husband at Trooping the Colour last month.
She wore a midi length frock with a v-neck, short sleeves, and small buttons down the front.
Lady Victoria paired her dress with a large fascinator, also in white, and coordinating heeled pumps.
Her chestnut locks were worn loose, and she opted for a chic make-up look, with a fresh base, pink blush, and natural lip.
She was photographed sitting next to her husband as they enjoyed the parade.
And they were not the only attendees representing politics at the event: such is the importance of the parade that senior representatives from allied nations also attend.
The PM posted today on X: 'Sending my best wishes to His Majesty The King today at Trooping the Colour. God Save The King.'
Trooping the Colour is a centuries-old tradition that marks the Sovereign's official birthday.
Victoria and Sir Keir married in 2007 - 13 years before Sir Keir became Labour leader. They met sometime in the early 2000s, when both were working as lawyers.
Victoria drafted documents for a case her future husband was working on during his time as a barrister at Doughty Street chambers, according to the Evening Standard.
Their first date was at a Camden pub, where they enjoyed inexpensive pizzas - but they now live in a £1.75 million Camden townhouse in Sir Keir's Holborn and St Pancras constituency.
Speaking on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in 2020, Sir Keir revealed how he met Victoria, explaining: 'I was doing a case in court and it all depended on whether the documents were accurate.
'I [asked the team] who actually drew up these documents, they said a woman called Victoria, so I said let's get her on the line.'
When he spoke to Lady Victoria, who was then working as a ward sister in the NHS, he grilled her on the documents.
Shortly before hanging up, he said he heard just one comment from her.
He explained: 'She said, "Who the bleep does he think he is?", then put the phone down on me. And quite right too.'
Lady Victoria grew up in Gospel Oak, north London, where her mother was a doctor, before forging out a career as a solicitor.
She served as a governor at her children's school and now works in occupational health for the NHS.
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'When you lose the person from your life that you really love, there's a grief that comes over you,' she says. The album's first single, On With the Show, was written at her lowest point. 'I didn't really want to go to the studio; I didn't really feel like I actually wanted to live at that point. I didn't find meaning and purpose in the music.' She just had the song title, which she shared with her collaborator Matt Maltese. 'I didn't even have to explain to him what it would be about, because he just knew. We spoke about the song and what it needed to be.' She had also recently seen Marius Petipa's 1898 classical ballet Raymonda. 'It's about a woman in the Crimean war and she has two lovers: one is in Russia and one is in Crimea,' she says. 'I could relate, because she was torn between these two entities: at that point, my dedication to music and my dedication to a person. And one was taking the energy from the other. So On With the Show was about me having to find the courage to let go of something, to meet back in with the path of my life as a singer.' Worse, she says, 'social media had come in to erode my relationship'. As a public figure on social media, 'people can view your relationship and have so much awareness of the fact that you're even in one. There's this really strange, invisible, intangible impression that interactions in that space can leave upon your living reality. I was upset at how much that had come to affect my personal, real life.' On Could Be Machine, a curveball industrial pop song inspired by Lady Gaga, Celeste explores the idea that 'the more time we spend with this technology, the more we become it'. 'My phone had become this antagonist in my life, via communication that I didn't want to receive and the fact it could just be in your hand. It was quite alien, in a way. I hadn't grown up with a phone stuck to my hand and it was something that I had to become more and more 'one' with in my music career.' She says that, during the relationship, love had reverted her to a kind of 'child-like state … a really pure version of yourself, before the world has seeped in and shaped you'. Losing the person who brought her into that state meant that she had to 'learn how to steer and guide' herself to rediscover it. She is leaning on other musicians to help her understand these difficult years. She cites Nina Simone's song Stars, a ballad about the cruelty and melancholy of being a professional musician. 'It says so much about the tragedy of where her life is at that moment in time, but then there's so much triumph in the fact she even gets to express herself in that way.' Another inspiration for Woman of Faces was the 1951 musical romantic comedy An American in Paris and one of its stars, Oscar Levant, who spent time in mental health institutions. 'I was really moved by what he seemed to carry in his being. And, I suppose, I relate a lot to artists who carry this pain, but their work eases it.' Whereas Celeste was previously in thrall to American blues and R&B ('the older sense of what R&B was in the 1940s'), down to the way she might 'time things and phrase things and even pronounce things', she has 'learned what my true voice is and who I really am as a person. I still have some of that phrasing and pronunciation there, but I exist a lot more as myself, therefore I sing a lot more as myself.' Buoyed up by her and others' art, does she feel happy? 'Yes!' She grins and throws her hands in the air. 'The main thing is finding happiness within the relationships I maintain around me and making sure those are kept really positive and nourishing.' She is glad to be in her 30s: 'Age becomes kind of taboo for a woman in the music industry – but then you hear people like Solange speak about women really coming into their true sense of who they are within their work. There's been a shift.' And if the happiness in her career ever dissipates, she has decided she will simply move on. 'I don't really see the need to live in a feeling of oppression, when I know there's so much freedom outside this world. And anyway, I'm sure I would find my way back to it again. But on my own terms.' Women of Faces is released on 14 November on Polydor In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
