Sir Keir Starmer, the brand new British Prime Minister, has a powerful CV: he has been a lawyer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions and a former Shadow Minister for Brexit. As an institution insider who knows the centres of power, he is not any novice on the subject of leadership. But that doesn’t necessarily make him an excellent leader, and even suggest that he has the potential to be one. Being a member of a privileged elite may get you a dream job, however it doesn’t mean you might be good at it.

Our ancient Welsh ancestors knew this well and told stories to show bad uses of power and promote good ones. My research has shown. Starmer could do much worse than the Four Branches of the Mabinogion from Welsh mythology during his first weeks in office. From these cleverly crafted tales of rule, he could learn quite a bit about how he should behave as head of presidency. And, crucially, how he shouldn’t.

English translations of the Four Branches and 7 other independent stories are present in two medieval manuscripts – The White Book of Rhydderch (around 1350) and The Red Book of Hergest (around 1382) – appeared as a part of Lady Charlotte Guests Mabinogion (1847–1849). She was an English aristocrat and the primary editor of the Mabinogion in modern print format.

Unlike the opposite stories in Guest's compendium, the tales of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan and Math are a part of a cycle of interwoven tales. Although they’re medieval compositions, they seem like based on older material and set in pre-Roman times.

By weaving magical practices and supernatural encounters into stories about prehistoric ruling elites, their conflicts, crimes, transgressions and acts of redemption, the Four Branches are sometimes seen as traces of a pre-Christian mythology native to Britain.

At least one scholar has suggested that the Four Branches are a sort of Handbook for Princes. It's not hard to see why. Each story within the cycle incorporates examples of bad and good rule and their consequences.

The fourth branch tells of the nephews of a ruler, Math, who rape their uncle's servant, Goewin. The terrible effects of their corruption spread virally across two kingdoms, bringing betrayal, humiliation, murder, and war.

But there may be also good leadership. Math imposes harsh, magical penance on his nephews and takes responsibility for what happened to Goewin. Rather than seeing his nephews' punishment as fulfilling the demands of justice, he takes the burden of reparation upon himself, offers to marry the abused woman and hands over power over his kingdom to her.

This suggests a belief that if you hold power, it’s best to take responsibility not just for your individual actions, but in addition for the actions of those you lead, whether members of the family or officials. Unfortunately, nothing seems farther from the blame and shame culture of contemporary British politics.

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While the Math and Goewin case is essentially the most dramatic and shocking lesson within the exercise of power within the 4 branches of presidency, it will not be the one story that would give the brand new Prime Minister food for thought.

In the primary branch we meet Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed. He makes various mistakes because of poor judgement and impetuous actions. The consequences of those are far-reaching and affect the following generation. His first mistake is that he disregards hunting etiquette and allows his hounds to eat a stag killed by one other king's pack. The insulted monarch seems to be Arawn, ruler of Annwfn (the Otherworld).

To make amends for his behavior, Pwyll must trade places with Arawn for a 12 months and a day and defeat his sworn enemy in single combat. When he finally returns to his own court, having paid the worth, he finds that his subjects didn’t miss him because Arawn, in his form, was a significantly better ruler than he was. Better because he was more generous and more willing to totally share the fun and sorrows of his people.

But Pwyll doesn’t learn his lesson and stays a person who acts and speaks without considering. After a magical encounter with the mysterious Rhiannon, the 2 determine to marry. A feast is thrown at her father's court to have a good time, however the man she rejected as a suitor shows up. Without considering, Pwyll welcomes him and offers him all the pieces in his power. Of course, he asks for Rhiannon's hand. She then has to avoid wasting herself by tricking him.

Gwawl, the unlucky suitor, is trapped in a sack and must negotiate his way out by retracting his claim to Rhiannon. Pwyll, still an unwise and ruthless ruler, allows his men to beat Gwawl while he’s within the sack and unable to defend himself.

In the third branch, this improper behavior proves fatal to his widow and her son Pryderi, when their land is cursed and their crops destroyed by a wizard who has made himself the avenger of Gwawl.

wisdom

The Mabinogion could remind the brand new Prime Minister that true leadership requires not only the exercise of power, but in addition the wisdom to make use of it properly, the humility to learn from mistakes, and the courage to take responsibility for one's own actions and people of 1's subordinates.

As Starmer navigates the complex political landscape, these old narratives could function a priceless compass, ensuring that his time in office is marked by justice, compassion and a real commitment to the great of the country.

LONDON (AP) — For someone often derided as boring, Keir Starmer has achieved a sensational election result.

Starmer led Britain's Labour Party to a landslide victory and have become the country's 58th prime minister on Friday. He is the primary centre-left politician to win a British general election since Tony Blair, who won the election 3 times in a row since 1997.

It is the newest reinvention of a person who went from human rights lawyer to hard-nosed prosecutor and from young radical to middle-aged pragmatist.

Like Blair, who reshaped the party as “New Labour” within the Nineteen Nineties, Starmer, 61, led Labour to a landslide victory over Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party in Thursday's election after pulling the party towards the political centre.

He won by promising voters change but additionally calm: he vowed to bring stability back to public life and provides Britain “the sunlight of hope” after 14 years of turmoil under the Conservatives.

“People see Starmer as a very solid man who is obviously very capable in his professional life,” said Douglas Beattie, creator of “How Labour Wins (and Why it Loses).”

“I think people want that caution, they want that stability.”

Starmer, a former Attorney General for England and Wales, has often been caricatured by Conservative opponents as a “left-wing London lawyer”. He was knighted for his role as head of the Crown Prosecution Service, and his opponents wish to use his title “Sir Keir Starmer” to portray him as elitist and out of touch with reality. While most prime ministers are knighted, damed – the feminine equivalent – or given other royal honours after their time in office, Starmer is the primary knight of the dominion to change into the country's head of state since Sir Alec Douglas-Hume in 1963.

Starmer prefers to emphasize his humble roots and down-to-earth tastes. He loves football – he still plays football at weekends – and enjoys nothing greater than watching Premier League team Arsenal over a pint at his local pub. He and his wife Victoria, who works in occupational health, have two teenage children whom they need to keep out of the general public eye.

During the election campaign, he stubbornly refused to disclose his identity. In an interview with the Guardian, he said he couldn’t remember any of his dreams, had no favorite novel and no childhood fears.

When he then got personal, telling a journalist that he hoped to unencumber Friday night to spend together with his family – his wife is Jewish and Friday Shabbat dinner is a family tradition – the Conservatives used this against him, claiming that Starmer was planning to be prime minister only part-time.

Starmer was born in 1963 to a toolmaker and a nurse who named him after Keir Hardie, the primary leader of the Labour Party. One of 4 children, he grew up in a financially disadvantaged household in a small town outside London.

“These have been tough times,” he said in a speech early in his campaign. “I know what it feels like to have runaway inflation, how the rising cost of living can make you fear the mailman coming down the road: 'Is he bringing us another bill we can't afford?'”

Starmer's mother suffered from a chronic illness, Still's syndrome, which caused her great pain. Starmer said his hospital visits and help together with his mother's care helped reinforce his strong support for the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).

He was the primary member of his family to attend college and studied law at Leeds University and Oxford. As a lawyer, he took on civil rights cases, including that of the “McLibel Two,” environmental activists who were sued by McDonald's for distributing leaflets claiming that the restaurant chain sold unhealthy food.

The cases often brought him into conflict with Conservative and Labour governments, so his move to Attorney General in 2008 surprised some colleagues. But during his five years within the job, he earned a popularity as a tricky and hard-working director of public prosecutions, a task that also included prosecuting people accused of terrorism, organised crime and other serious offences.

Starmer entered politics relatively late, when he was over 50, and was elected to Parliament in 2015. He often disagreed with the party's then leader, the staunch socialist Jeremy Corbyn. At one point he even left the party's top team due to differences of opinion, but agreed to act as Labour's Brexit spokesman under Corbyn.

Starmer has been repeatedly questioned about this decision, in addition to his calls for voters to support Corbyn, a polarising figure under whose leadership the party suffered a crushing defeat within the 2019 election.

He said he desired to stay and fight for change within the Labour Party, arguing: “Leaders are temporary, but political parties are permanent.”

After Corbyn led the Labour Party to electoral defeats in 2017 and 2019 – in 2019 it achieved the party's worst result since 1935 – Labour appointed Starmer to guide the reconstruction effort.

His time in office got here at a turbulent time when Britain suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, left the EU, handled the economic shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and endured the economic turmoil of Liz Truss's turbulent 49-day term as prime minister in 2022.

Voters are bored with the price of living crisis, a wave of public sector strikes and the political turmoil that saw the Conservative Party send out two prime ministers – Boris Johnson and Truss – inside weeks of one another in 2022 before installing Sunak to attempt to get the ship back on the right track.

Starmer imposed discipline on a celebration with a well-deserved popularity for internal division, dropped a few of Corbyn's socialist policies and apologised for the anti-Semitism that an internal investigation found had been allowed to spread under Corbyn.

Starmer promised “a culture change in the Labour Party”. His mantra is now “country before party”.

Starmer has promised voters that a Labour government could ease Britain's chronic housing crisis and repair its ailing public services, particularly the health service – but without raising taxes or increasing national debt.

“While I don't think anyone is particularly enthusiastic about Keir Starmer, I think he has done a good job of positioning himself as the type of competent adult in the room who will be able to bring the government back to where it belongs,” said Lise Butler, a lecturer in modern history at City University of London.

Starmer was a staunch opponent of Britain's decision to go away the European Union, but now he says a Labour government won’t attempt to reverse Brexit – one other disappointment for a lot of within the party.

“Many people on the left will accuse him of letting them down and betraying socialist principles. And many people on the right will accuse him of changing his mind,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

“But hey, if that's what it takes to win, then I think that says something about Starmer's character. He will do whatever it takes – and has done whatever it takes – to get into government.”

Associated Press author Danica Kirka contributed to this text.