Nazir Afzal

Director of Crown Prosecution Service (CPS); London West and South. He was honoured with an OBE in 2005 Queen's New Year's Honour's List.

[2026, on Keir Starmer] He is forensic, principled and serious in a way our politics badly needs more of. As DPP he transformed the prosecution service, and I never once doubted his integrity or his sense of public duty. He will leave office a fundamentally decent man, which, in this era, is no small thing. But connection did not come naturally to him, and I saw that up close. He led with argument and detail where the moment often cried out for warmth. He could win the case and still lose the room... In calmer times, this rational, logical approach might not have been a fatal flaw, but in an age when the public has decided, by default, that it is being lied to, being able to build trust and connect is a vital skill. Starmer's values and intentions were always the right ones. His struggle, in the end, was making people believe it.