Barack Obama advised Keir Starmer to open up with the public – and help ward off false narratives, according to their mutual friend, the shadow foreign secretary.

Speaking on POLITICO’s Power Play podcast, David Lammy explained that the former US president believes all 21st Century politicians have to be “communicate who they really are”.

Lammy said: “Obama’s approach is always seated in authenticity.

“We have seen Keir Starmer talking a lot more about… his mother – his mother struggled terribly with illness for many, many years, his father cared for her — [and] talking about his backstory, much more comfortably than perhaps we saw a few years ago.

“And I know that Obama had strong views that Keir should do that.”

Starmer’s father Rodney spent years caring for his wife Josephine, who lived with Still’s disease, a rare form of inflammatory arthritis which can be debilitating.

The Labour leader rarely discussed his father prior to his conversations with Obama, only coming as far as calling him a “difficult man”.

Then, in 2022, Starmer seemed to change his approach, having reportedly been introduced to former US president by Lammy in 2021 (the Labour frontbencher met Obama at an event for Harvard Law School’s Black alumni).

Obama then began to act as an informal adviser to Starmer, who is expected to win at the next general election.