title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer was appointed Queen's Counsel on 9 April 2002, aged 39. In the same year, he became joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. Starmer served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and was also a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's death penalty advisory panel from 2002 to 2008. He later cited his work on policing in Northern Ireland as being a key influence on his decision to pursue a political career: "Some of the things I thought that needed to change in police services we achieved more quickly than we achieved in strategic litigation ... I came better to understand how you can change by being inside and getting the trust of people". During this time he also marched and authored legal opinions against the Iraq War. In 2007, he was named "QC of the Year" by Chambers and Partners.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In July 2008, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, Attorney General for England and Wales, named Starmer as the new head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Director of Public Prosecutions. He took over from Ken Macdonald on 1 November 2008. Macdonald, himself a former defence lawyer, publicly welcomed the appointment. Starmer was considered to be bringing a focus on human rights into the legal system.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Within the first few months of his tenure, Starmer upheld the decision not to prosecute the police officers who had killed Jean Charles de Menezes in a UK High Court appeal lodged by the family. The family then gave up on pursuing charges and nobody has been charged with the death of de Menezes. Later in 2009, when the Conservative Party proposed repealing the Human Rights Act 1998, Starmer defended it as a "clear and basic statement of our citizens' human rights". Liberty and the Liberal Democrats supported Starmer, while the Conservative MP David T. C. Davies suggested that he should be sacked. In the same year, he called for the CPS to modernise by being more open to scrutiny and less reliant on paper files. In 2011, he introduced reforms that included the "first test paperless hearing".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In February 2010, Starmer announced the CPS's decision to prosecute three Labour MPs and a Conservative peer for offences relating to false accounting in the aftermath of the parliamentary expenses scandal. They were all found guilty. In the same year, he supported proposals to legally recognise different degrees of murder. In 2010, and 2012, Starmer said that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute two members of the UK security services for their alleged role in torture overseas; he supported further investigation. In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute the police officer Simon Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson; this led to accusations by Tomlinson's family of a police cover-up. After a subsequent inquest found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, Starmer announced that Harwood would be prosecuted for manslaughter. The officer was acquitted by a jury in July 2012 but dismissed from the police that September. In December 2010, Starmer changed the decision process, including requiring his personal approval, to prosecute women who withdraw accusations of rape after a woman was convicted for perverting the course of justice "despite judges' belief that her claim of long-term abuse, intimidation and rape at the hands of her husband was true". He later produced guidelines to prevent women in similar circumstances from being unfairly prosecuted. In 2011, thirteen serving and former police officers were prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in the 1988 murder of Lynette White. The prosecution were unable to provide documents which "could have helped" the defendants, that were claimed to have been destroyed by the police officer leading the case against them. The prosecution made the decision, approved by Starmer, not to offer any further evidence, and the trial collapsed. Starmer ordered a review into the circumstances that had led to the decision and ordered a further review in 2012 when the missing documents were found.


title: Keir Starmer

text: During the 2011 England riots, Starmer prioritised rapid prosecutions of rioters over long sentences, which he later thought had helped to bring "the situation back under control". Later that year, after revelations concerning the undercover police infiltration of environmental campaigns, Starmer ordered a review of related convictions and invited protestors convicted of aggravated trespass to appeal their sentences. Starmer declined to authorise a wider enquiry, after a report from the judge Christopher Rose found the issue to be a result of individual fault rather than a systemic problem.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In February 2012, Starmer announced that Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in "R v Huhne". Huhne became the first UK cabinet minister in history to be compelled to resign as a result of criminal proceedings. Starmer had previously said in relation to the case that there is sufficient evidence we do not shy away from prosecuting politicians". Later that year, he wrote advice for prosecutors, saying that they should consider whether violent protestors organised or prepared for violence, compared to protestors who got "caught up in illegal actions". In the summer of 2012, journalist Nick Cohen published allegations that Starmer was personally responsible for allowing to proceed the prosecution of Paul Chambers in what became known as the "Twitter joke trial". Chambers' conviction of sending a message "of a menacing character" was quashed after a third appeal. The CPS denied that Starmer was behind the decision, saying that it was the responsibility of a Crown Court and was out of Starmer's hands. Later that year, Starmer published a plan for the criminal justice system to better handle cases of female genital mutilation; at the time, the offence had never been successfully prosecuted. At the end of 2012, he published guidance on prosecuting cases of grossly offensive posts on social media that called for caution in prosecuting cases, and considering whether users quickly removed posts or showed remorse.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In 2013, Starmer announced changes to how sexual abuse investigations are handled in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, including a panel to review historic complaints. In the same year, he published a study showing that false reports of rape were rare, saying that the "devastating impact of false allegations" and the perception that they are more common than the data support mean that police forces might adopt what he called a cautious approach that can "lead to injustice for victims" of rape. He also started an inquiry into the cause of a reduction in police reports of rape and domestic abuse. In the same year, he altered guidelines for those improperly claiming benefits enabling them to face ten years in prison under the Fraud Act instead of a maximum of seven years under more specific legislation.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer left office in November 2013, and was replaced by Alison Saunders. Later that month, the Labour Party announced that Starmer would lead an enquiry into changing the law to give further protection to victims in cases of rape and child abuse. On 28 December, he said to BBC News he was "rather enjoying having some free time" and "considering a number of options". There was speculation at the time that he would stand as a Labour Party candidate for the UK Parliament.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer was selected in December 2014 to be the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour UK constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, a safe seat, following the decision of the sitting MP Frank Dobson to retire. Starmer was elected at the 2015 UK general election with a majority of 17,048. He was urged by a number of activists to stand in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election following the resignation of Ed Miliband; he ruled this out, citing his relative lack of political experience. During the campaign, Starmer supported Andy Burnham, who finished second to Jeremy Corbyn, the new Leader of the Labour Party .


title: Keir Starmer

text: Corbyn appointed Starmer to the Shadow Home Secretary ministerial team as Shadow Minister for Immigration, a role from which he resigned as part of the wide June 2016 British shadow cabinet resignations in protest at Corbyn's leadership, along with several other Labour MPs saying that it was "simply untenable now to suggest we can offer an effective opposition without a change of leader".


title: Keir Starmer

text: Following Corbyn's win in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election in September, Starmer accepted an appointment as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, replacing Emily Thornberry who had held the role concurrently with her continuing position as Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. On taking up the role, Starmer resigned from a consultancy position with the law firm specialising in human rights, Mishcon de Reya, that had acted for Gina Miller in bringing legal proceedings against the government in "R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In his role as Shadow Brexit Secretary, Starmer questioned the government's destination for the UK outside of the European Union (EU), as well as calling for Brexit plans to be made public. On 6 December 2016, the prime minister Theresa May confirmed the publication of Brexit plans, in what some considered a victory for Starmer. He argued that the government would be need to pass a large number of new laws quickly, or risk what he called an "unsustainable legal vacuum", if Britain left the EU without a deal. At the 2018 Labour Party Conference on 25 September, Starmer advocated for a referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, saying that the party "campaigning for a public vote must be an option".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In January 2017, Starmer called for a reform to the EU free movement rules following Brexit and for a "fundamental rethink of immigration rules from start to finish". In his first interview after being appointed to the shadow cabinet, Starmer said that immigration should be reduced after Britain left the EU by "making sure we have the skills in this country". Starmer had told "Politico" in November 2016 that negotiations with the EU should start on the understanding that there must be "some change" to freedom of movement rules, given that remaining in the EU single market is no longer a reality.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In May 2017, Starmer said that "free movement has to go" but that it was important to allow EU citizens to migrate to the UK once they had a job offer, given the importance of immigration for the UK's economy. Starmer was a supporter of a second referendum on Brexit. This position was included as a Labour Party policy in the party's 2019 UK general election manifesto.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Following Labour's defeat at the 2019 general election, Corbyn announced that he would stand down as Leader of the Labour Party. Starmer announced his candidacy in the ensuing leadership election on 4 January 2020, winning endorsements from MPs, as well as from the trade union Unison. Supporters of Rebecca Long-Bailey criticised Starmer for releasing details of his campaign donations on the register of members' interests rather than independently, as Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy had done, which meant that details of his donors were not published until after voting had opened.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer went on to win the leadership contest on 4 April 2020, beating Long-Bailey and Nandy, with 56.2% of the vote in the first round, and became Leader of the Opposition. In his acceptance speech, Starmer said he would refrain from "scoring party political points" and planned to "engage constructively with the government", having become opposition leader amid the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Keir Starmer

text: As the Leader of the Opposition, Starter has had a weekly slot at Prime Minister's Questions which he has used to quiz Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak on the issues of the day.


title: Keir Starmer

text: During the 2020 April pandemic lockdown, Starmer called for the government to publish an exit strategy outlining which parts of the economy and society would be prioritised once the government's tests for coming out of lockdown were met. He said that the government had been "too slow to enter the lockdown", and called for an exit plan in a "careful, considered way with public health, scientific evidence and the safety of workers and families". In June 2020, Starmer said he would support the government in "trying to do the right thing" when scrutinising the government's plans to ease lockdown restrictions. On 16 August, he called for the government to reopen schools in September 2020, saying there were "no ifs, no buts, no equivocation" regarding the decision.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer made his first speech to the Labour Party Conference on 22 September 2020. He attacked the government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis, calling it "serial incompetence" and suggesting that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was "just not up to the job". Labour unveiled "A New Leadership" as its slogan the day before the conference. In October 2020, Starmer called for the government to introduce a "circuit-breaker" stay-at-home order for at least two weeks to reduce the impact of COVID-19 over the winter, which had been revealed to have been recommended by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies but not implemented by the government. In December 2020, Starmer was criticised for failing to challenge white nationalist, Great Replacement conspiracy theories made by a caller when he was a guest on Nick Ferrari's programme on talk radio station LBC.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer led the Labour Party into the 2021 local elections. On 11 March, Starmer launched Labour's local election campaign, with Angela Rayner (Deputy Leader), Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London), Mark Drakeford (First Minister of Wales), Anas Sarwar (Scottish Labour leader), and Tracy Brabin (Mayor of West Yorkshire candidate) as speakers. The party focused its election priorities on giving nurses a pay rise. This was during a period of popularity for the Second Johnson ministry in the wake of the COVID-19 vaccination in the United Kingdom; into the short campaign period, the Conservative Party started to develop a 6–7% poll lead on the Labour Party.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer was criticised for the Labour Party's failure to win the 2021 Hartlepool by-election. Hartlepool is part of the "red wall", a set of constituencies that historically supported the Labour Party but where the party is being challenged by increasing Conservative support. The Labour Party candidate Paul Williams was a vocal advocate of a second referendum on EU membership; 70% of voters in the constituency of Hartlepool had voted to leave the EU, leading to criticism that Starmer had made the wrong decision in advocating for Williams to be selected as the candidate. The Conservative candidate Jill Mortimer won the by-election with 51.9% of the vote and a swing from Labour of almost 16%. It became only the second time since 1982 that the governing party gained a seat in a by-election, and the first Conservative win in the constituency since its creation in 1974, with a majority of 6,940 votes.


title: Keir Starmer

text: At the local elections on 6 May 2021, the Labour Party lost 327 councillors and control of 8 councils. While it gained control of Mayor of the West of England and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, the Labour Party failed to take the position of Mayor of the West Midlands. The party won a net equal number of police and crime commissioners. Elections also took place to the devolved Scottish Parliament and Senedd. In the 2021 Senedd election, Labour equalled its best ever result, falling one seat short of an overall majority, which has never been achieved in that institution, which the BBC reporter Adrian Browne credited to Mark Drakeford and approval of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, the party achieved its worst ever result at a Holyrood election, winning just 16 seats two less than in 2016. In July, Labour won the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election and held the seat, a result that was considered to have taken some pressure off Starmer's leadership.


title: Keir Starmer

text: The 2022 local elections on 5 May took place during a more difficult period for the government, which was seeing problems like Partygate and a rising cost of living. The Labour Party made gains across Great Britain winning by far the largest number of seats overall. Starmer was criticised by many on the British Left, both in and outside of the Labour Party, as many felt that Starmer had underperformed in comparison with smaller parties, which made bigger net gains. Amid the unpopularity of the Conservatives throughout 2022, Labour have gained a major lead in the opinion polling for the next general election. Since the end of 2021, Labour consistently polled ahead of the Conservatives as the government was affected by issues and the cost of living crisis..


title: Keir Starmer

text: In December 2022, Labour held both the City of Chester and Stretford and Urmston. in by-elections, in both there was a marked swing th Labour.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In April 2020, the Shadow Cabinet of Starmer was appointed over the course of the week following the leadership election, which included former leader Ed Miliband, as well as both of the candidates he defeated in the contest. He also appointed Anneliese Dodds as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, making her the first woman to serve in that position in either a ministerial or shadow ministerial position.


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 25 June 2020, Starmer sacked his former leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey from her post as Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Long-Bailey had refused to delete a tweet calling the actress Maxine Peake an "absolute diamond" and linking to an interview in "The Independent" in which Peake said that the practice of kneeling on someone's neck by US police, as used in the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, was "learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services". The original article stated that "the Israeli police has denied this." Starmer said that because the article "contained anti-Semitic conspiracy theories" it should not have been shared by Long-Bailey. The decision to sack Long-Bailey was criticised by the Socialist Campaign Group, whose members met with Starmer about the decision. The decision was welcomed by some Jewish groups including the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement. Starmer said that "restoring trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority. Antisemitism takes many different forms and it is important that we all are vigilant against it." On 27 June, he replaced her with Kate Green.


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 23 September 2020, three frontbenchers (Olivia Blake, Nadia Whittome, and Beth Winter) rebelled against Labour's position of abstention on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill and voted against the bill; all three lost their frontbench roles over the issue. This move was seen as an indication of the firm discipline Starmer intends to exert over his party. In the third reading of the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill on 15 October 2020, the Labour Party stance was to abstain yet 34 Labour MPs rebelled, including shadow ministers Dan Carden and Margaret Greenwood, and five parliamentary private secretaries who all resigned from their frontbench roles. These 34 were penalised the next day by being put on probation for going against the one-line whip to abstain.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In October 2020, following the release of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's report into antisemitism in the party, Starmer accepted its findings in full and apologised to Jews on behalf of the party. Later that day, Labour suspended former leader Corbyn over his response to the report. Some saw Starmer's actions as "civil war" against the left wing of the party, and many on the left called for Corbyn's suspension to be lifted. Starmer's refusal to reverse the decision regarding Corbyn's suspension, and later the whip, resulted in sections of the left feeling alienated.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In the aftermath of relatively poor results in the 2021 UK local elections, Starmer carried out a May 2021 British shadow cabinet reshuffle. Starmer sacked Angela Rayner as Chair of the Labour Party and National Campaign Coordinator following the elections. The move was criticised by John McDonnell, former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester. The major outcome of the reshuffle was the demotion of the Shadow Chancellor, Anneliese Dodds. Rachel Reeves was appointed as the new Shadow Chancellor and Angela Rayner succeeded Reeves as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Nick Brown was dismissed as Chief Whip and replaced by his deputy, Alan Campbell. Valerie Vaz departed as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and was replaced by Thangam Debbonaire, who in turn was succeeded as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing by Lucy Powell. On 11 May 2021, Starmer's Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) Carolyn Harris resigned, which "The Times" reported was after allegedly spreading false rumours about the private life of Angela Rayner prior to her sacking. Sharon Hodgson was appointed as Starmer's new PPS.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In the run up to Labour's conference in September 2021, the party announced plans to reform its governance structure with changes including the return of its older electoral college which would give MPs, members and trade unions a third of the vote each in future leadership elections. Starmer's spokespeople said that this was a way to strengthen the party's link with the trade union movement but commentators described the changes as an attempt to increase the power of MPs and trade unions at the expense of the general membership, along with being a symbolic act to draw a distinction between Starmer and Corbyn. Starmer gave up on the electoral college after it failed to gain the support of trade unions; the party's executive committee agreed to send a series of more modest reforms to conference, including increasing the percentage of Labour MPs a candidate would need the support of to get on the leadership election ballot, banning the party's newest members from voting, and making it harder for members to deselect MPs. These changes were later passed by a small margin. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers' Union voted to end its affiliation to Labour dating back to early in the party's history, commenting that it had "travelled away from the aims and hopes of working-class organisations like ours" under Starmer's leadership.


title: Keir Starmer

text: The November 2021 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, which was considered a surprise, included the promotion of Yvette Cooper and David Lammy to Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, respectively, while Miliband was moved from Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Industrial Strategy to Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero. The appointment of Cooper in particular was described by some commentators as a sign of Labour further splitting from the Corbyn leadership and moving to the right. The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston of ITV News said that the reshuffle aimed to "combine experience and youth" and end "the fatuous project of trying to ... placate Labour's warring factions", and instead chose "shadow ministers for their perceived ability". In the "New Statesman", journalist Stephen Bush suggested that Starmer had "removed underperforming shadow cabinet ministers and rewarded his biggest hitters – but the resulting shadow cabinet looks to be less than the sum of its parts."


title: Keir Starmer

text: Shortly before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 11 Labour backbench MPs signed a letter by the Stop the War Coalition that accused the UK government of "sabre-rattling" and said that NATO "should call a halt to its eastward expansion and commit to a new security deal for Europe which meets the needs of all states and peoples", whilst also arguing that NATO was an aggressive organisation due to military actions taken by its members outside its borders in the past. The MPs were asked by the party whips, representatives of the leadership tasked with maintaining discipline among Labour MPs, to remove their names from the statement under threat of being expelled from the party and all quickly agreed to do so. A spokesperson for the Labour Party said that this action ensured that every Labour MP understood that their party was on the side of "Britain, Nato, freedom and democracy". At around this time, Young Labour's Twitter account was suspended after it criticised the leadership policy towards NATO. In an interview with the BBC in March 2022, Starmer was asked whether he would be hoping that MPs who backed Stop the War "won't be standing at the next election or if they do whether [he would] be fully supporting them to do so". After repeatedly being accused of not answering the question, Starmer gave the answer of "well, they are Labour MPs and of course I support them, but all of our MPs will go through a process for selection into the next election".


title: Keir Starmer

text: The summer of 2022 saw significant amounts of industrial unrest. Starmer instructed members of his shadow cabinet to refrain from joining picketlines; some Labour MPs appeared on picket-lines including frontbenchers Kate Osborne, Paula Barker, Peter Kyle, and Navendu Mishra. The Labour Party's contingents in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments also took a different approach. Sam Tarry, Shadow Minister for Buses and Local Transport, was sacked on 27 July after appearing on a rail strike picket. He said in a TV interview that workers should receive a pay rise in line with inflation though Labour policy was that pay increases should be based on negotiation. A spokesperson for the party said that "Sam Tarry was sacked because he booked himself onto media programmes without permission and then made up policy on the hoof." His sacking was criticised by trade union leaders and Tarry wrote in an opinion piece for the "I" that "failing to join the striking rail workers on a picket line would have been an abject dereliction of duty for me as a Labour MP."


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 17 July 2022, the Forde Report was published, having been commissioned by Starmer at the beginning of his leadership. It described how groups within Labour had sought to hinder Corbyn while leader of the Labour Party and said that during his leadership it broke into factions which supported or opposed him, though this factionalism had decreased since Starmer took leadership. The report said that groups within the party who were in support and opposition to Corbyn both sought to use allegations of antisemitism in the party during his leadership to further their political interests. The report detailed bullying, racism, and sexism within the party. The report also said many of those within the party it gathered evidence from were concerned the party operated a "hierarchy of racism or of discrimination", with more resources being allocated to investigate claims of antisemitism, amid their surge and political importance, compared to other forms of discrimination. Starmer was criticised for his lack of response to the report and the problems within the party that it highlighted, in particular anti-black racism. In September 2022, Al Jazeera began publishing "The Labour Files", a series of internal Labour Party documents and associated reports on anti-Corbyn corruption during his leadership as well as current anti-black racism and Islamophobia in the Labour Party. Starmer was criticised for failing to acknowledge or address the findings of "The Labour Files".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In October and November 2022, Starmer was accused of designing and using Labour's new selection process for parliamentary candidates to prevent Corbyn-supporting, left-wing, or disloyal prospective MPs from being able to stand at the next general election. On 14 November 2022, it was reported that the leadership of the Labour Party would not restore the whip to Corbyn, preventing him from ever again standing for election on behalf of the Labour Party. This led to criticism and speculation Corbyn could stand for election as the Mayor of London or in his current Parlimentary constituency as an independent candidate, in opposition to Labour.


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 2 February 2022, during Prime Minister's Questions, Boris Johnson said that when Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), he prosecuted journalists and had failed to prosecute the serial sex offender Jimmy Savile. Starmer described this as a "ridiculous slur" and Johnson's comment was criticised by the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle. BBC Reality Check says Johnson's unfounded claim had already been discredited. Johnson later said that Starmer personally had "nothing to do" with the failure to prosecute Savile, but that he was "making a point about [Starmer's] responsibility for the organisation as a whole". Johnson received criticism for the comment and his policy adviser, Munira Mirza, resigned three days later, saying in her resignation letter that Johnson had made "a scurrilous accusation" against Starmer.


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 7 February, while he was leaving Parliament, Starmer was harassed by a group of people, who shouted "traitor" and "Jimmy Savile". Two of the protesters were arrested. Shayan Sardarizadeh for BBC Monitoring said that the protest was an attempt to recreate the Canadian convoy protests in the UK, and noted that the activists' references to Magna Carta indicated that the protesters were members of the sovereign citizen movement. A week later it was reported that Starmer had received death threats. MPs, including seven Conservatives, called on Johnson to fully withdraw what Conservative Julian Smith called "false slurs", but Johnson said the actions of the protesters were "absolutely disgraceful" and harassment of elected representatives was "completely unacceptable".


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 30 April 2021, Starmer was part of a political campaign team for the Hartlepool by-election and local elections in the Durham office of MP Mary Foy. In the evening, a student took a short video through the office window. The next day, "The Sun" published pictures from it showing Starmer with a beer while others ate a takeaway, with a Labour statement that they had complied with the rules, including a pause for food. At that time, The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps) (England) Regulations 2021 allowed gatherings when reasonably necessary for work purposes. Starmer and Angela Rayner were cleared by Durham Police of any wrongdoing. The police said they had concluded that the gathering was reasonably necessary for work purposes.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer inherited a party membership of 552,835 when he replaced Jeremy Corbyn as leader in April 2020. By the time of the NEC vote seven months later, that had dropped by 56,874, more than 10%, to 495,961, but still the largest of any UK party. The drop coincided with a number of challenges Starmer faced due to his relationship with the left of the party, including in response to his suspension of Corbyn from the party, and his removal of Rebecca Long-Bailey from his shadow cabinet. By the end of 2021, membership had fallen to 432,213, a drop of more than 21% since Starmer became leader, but still more than double the membership of the Conservative Party. "Momentum", a left-wing campaign group, said Starmer's "factional" leadership was to blame as it alienated trade unions. Starmer dismissed this, saying it followed the pattern of membership going up before an election and flattening off again after. According to "The Guardian", the future of "Momentum", a grassroots group of left-wing Labour Party members, is in jeopardy due to financial difficulties as "thousands of leftwingers have deserted the Labour party under Keir Starmer’s leadership".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In June 2022, Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, launched an investigation into Starmer, following complaints that he had been late to register income and hospitality. On 4 August 2022, Starmer was found to have breached the MP's code of conduct 8 times. Stone said the breaches were "minor and/or inadvertent".


title: Keir Starmer

text: With the Labour Party needing to gain many new seats if they are to win the next election, and with at least a dozen of their standing MPs planning to stand down before the next election, by early November 2022, the party had started the selection process for the new candidates they will need.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Party members who supported Jeremy Corbyn, the party's previous leader, are saying that under Starmer's leadership, they are being targeted for exclusion by the selection process. Under the selection system, step one is to get onto a 'longlist', which will then be refined down to a 'shortlist'. BBC News say that unnamed potential candidates have said that party employees are being asked to search their online activities for reasons to keep them off the 'longlist'. One unnamed Labour MP from the left of the party said of the party leadership that they used too much power and that they went further than Blair. The party defended this activity saying it was for quality control purposes. John McTernan, a former advisor for Tony Blair, supported the activity, saying Labour needs to return "good MPs" with "mainstream Labour values" for the coming election adding that under Corbyn, too many unsuitable people became Labour MPs. A Labour representative said "Due diligence is about" removing "candidates who could cause electoral damage".


title: Keir Starmer

text: On 13 November 2022, "The Guardian" said that under Starmer, the way the selection panel has "exerted tight control" over how candidates are selected for shortlisting had become "extraordinary". Starmer "allies" say that selection vetting needs to be tougher as there has recently been a lot of MPs "suspended, arrested or [...] embarrassed for ill-advised tweets". "The Guardian" added that the measures often appear to be factional even though previous scandals have not solely involved candidates from the party's left. The co-chair of "Momentum", Hilary Schan, said how times were hard for the left in the Labour party, amid the "controversy over party selections" in which candidates from the left-wing of the party were "excluded from shortlists".


title: Keir Starmer

text: "The New Statesman" credits Starmer's campaign director, Morgan McSweeney, with the idea of "marginalising left-wingers" using a more stringent selection process.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer wrote articles for the magazines "Socialist Alternatives" and "Socialist Lawyer" as a young man in the 1980s and 1990s. In July 1986, Starmer wrote in the first issue of "Socialist Alternatives" that trade unions should have had control over the "industry and community". He wrote in "Socialist Lawyer" that "Karl Marx was, of course, right" in saying it was pointless to believe a change of society could only be achieved by arguing about fundamental rights.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer has been described as being on the soft left, in continuity with former Labour leader Ed Miliband. Gavin Millar, a former legal colleague of Starmer, has described his politics as "red-green", a characterisation Starmer has agreed with. In a January 2020 interview, Starmer described himself as a socialist, and stated in an opinion piece published by "The Guardian" the same month that his advocacy of socialism is motivated by "a burning desire to tackle inequality and injustice".


title: Keir Starmer

text: In an interview with the "i"s Francis Elliott in December 2021, Starmer refused to characterise himself as a socialist as he seeks to move Labour closer to the political centre for a possible next UK general election in 2023, asking "What does that mean?" He added: "The Labour Party is a party that believes that we get the best from each other when we come together, collectively, and ensure that you know, we give people both opportunity and support as they needed."


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer supports social ownership and investment in the UK's public services, including the National Health Service (NHS), as well as the abolition of university tuition fees. He has called for an increase in income tax for the top 5% of earners and an end to tax avoidance by corporations. He advocates the reversal of the Conservative Party's cuts in corporation tax and supported Labour's anti-austerity proposals under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. On social inequality, Starmer proposes "national wellbeing indicators" to measure the country's performance on health, inequality, homelessness, and the environment. He has called for an "overhaul" of the UK's Universal Credit scheme. Opposing Scottish independence and a second referendum on the subject, the Labour Party under Starmer's leadership has set up a constitutional convention to address what he describes as a belief among people across the UK that "decisions about me should be taken closer to me." Starmer is against the reunification of Ireland, having stated that he would be "very much on the side of Unionists" if there were to be a border poll. On education, he vowed in 2021 to strip independent schools of their charitable status, a move that has been criticised by the Independent Schools Council, and he repeated the pledge in July 2022.


title: Keir Starmer

text: In the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, Starmer ran on a pledge to renationalise rail, mail, water, and energy back into common ownership; he dropped this pledge in July 2022. In 2022 speeches, Starmer criticised the Conservative government and vowed to restore trust in government if he came to power. He described the Labour Party as "deeply patriotic" and cited its most successful leaders, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair, for policies "rooted in the everyday concerns of working people". Starmer advocates a government based on "security, prosperity and respect". He wants crime reduced, maintaining that "too many people do not feel safe in their streets". He also wants to see "repairing after the pandemic". Starmer favours partnership between government and business, having said: "A political party without a clear plan for making sure businesses are successful and growing ... which doesn't want them to do well and make a profit ... has no hope of being a successful government." Starmer wants to replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, Starmer maintains the Conservatives have too often given peerages to ‘lackeys and donors‘.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer has advocated an end to "illegal wars" and a review of the UK arms export. During his leadership campaign, he pledged to create a "Prevention of Military Intervention Act", which would only permit lawful military action with the support of the House of Commons. Starmer stated in 2015 that he believed that the Iraq War was "not lawful under international law because there was no UN resolution expressly authorising it." Starmer called for sanctions against Chinese officials who have been involved in human rights abuses. He criticised the United Kingdom's involvement in the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen, saying that "it is Boris Johnson and his government who have signed off on the sale of billions of pounds of fighter jets, bombs and missiles, weapons that have destroyed civilian infrastructure, targeted schools and hospitals, and fuelled the humanitarian crisis that Yemen faces. The government must face up to its complicity in this crisis, and we must all talk about Yemen." Starmer condemned the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and said the world needed to "engage, not isolate" Iran and warned that "all sides need to de-escalate tensions and prevent further conflict."


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer was previously an advocate for a second Brexit referendum after the process of the UK withdrawal from the EU was completed; in 2021, he ruled out a return to free movement with the EU or substantial renegotiation of the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement if Labour won the next UK general election. Of the United States as it transitioned from the presidency of Donald Trump to that of Joe Biden, he said: "I'm anti-Trump but I'm pro-American. And I'm incredibly optimistic about the new relationship we can build with President Biden." He argued that "Britain is at its strongest" when it is "the bridge between the US and the rest of Europe." Starmer said that Israel "must respect international law" and called on the Israeli government to work with leaders of Palestine to de-escalate the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Starmer opposes illegal Israeli settlements, proposals for Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and "the eviction of Palestinians" in the Israeli-occupied territories; he also opposes the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel.


title: Keir Starmer

text: During the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis, Starmer held a meeting with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg and said in an interview with the BBC that his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn was "wrong" to be a critic of NATO and that the Labour Party's commitment to the alliance was "unshakeable". He elaborated on this point that he felt it was "important for me to make clear that we stand united in the UK ... Whatever challenges we have with the [Boris Johnson's] government, when it comes to Russian aggression we stand together." He said Russia should be hit with "widespread and hard-hitting" economic sanctions. He also criticised the Stop the War Coalition in an opinion piece for "The Guardian" arguing that they were "not benign voices for peace" but rather "[a]t best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders" such as Vladimir Putin "who directly threaten democracies."


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer supports maintaining the UK's nuclear arsenal as the nuclear deterrent, and voted for renewal of the Trident program; he supports the general post-Cold War British policy of a gradual reduction in nuclear stockpiles.


title: Keir Starmer

text: Starmer married Victoria Alexander in 2007. She was previously a solicitor but now works in NHS occupational health. The couple's son and daughter are being brought up in the Jewish faith of their mother. Starmer himself stated he does not believe in God but does "believe in faith" and its power to bring people together. Starmer is a keen footballer, having played for Homerton Academicals, a north London amateur team, and supports Premier League side Arsenal.


title: Lobotomy

text: A lobotomy, or leucotomy, is a form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder (e.g. epilepsy) that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex. The surgery causes most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, to be severed.


title: Lobotomy

text: In the past, this treatment was used for treating psychiatric disorders as a mainstream procedure in some countries. The procedure was controversial from its initial use, in part due to a lack of recognition of the severity and chronicity of severe and enduring psychiatric illnesses, so it was claimed to be an inappropriate treatment. Frontal lobe surgery, including lobotomy, is the second most common surgery for epilepsy to this day, and usually done on one side of the brain, unlike lobotomies for psychiatric disorder which were done on both sides of the brain.


title: Lobotomy

text: The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949 for the "discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses", although the awarding of the prize has been subject to controversy.


title: Lobotomy

text: The use of the procedure increased dramatically from the early 1940s and into the 1950s; by 1951, almost 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States and proportionally more in the United Kingdom. More lobotomies were performed on women than on men: a 1951 study found that nearly 60% of American lobotomy patients were women, and limited data shows that 74% of lobotomies in Ontario from 1948 to 1952 were performed on female patients. From the 1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned, first in the Soviet Union and Europe. The term is derived from "lobe" and "cut, slice".


title: Lobotomy

text: Historically, patients of lobotomy were, immediately following surgery, often stuporous, confused, and incontinent. Some developed an enormous appetite and gained considerable weight. Seizures were another common complication of surgery. Emphasis was put on the training of patients in the weeks and months following surgery.


title: Lobotomy

text: The purpose of the operation was to reduce the symptoms of mental disorders, and it was recognized that this was accomplished at the expense of a person's personality and intellect. British psychiatrist Maurice Partridge, who conducted a follow-up study of 300 patients, said that the treatment achieved its effects by "reducing the complexity of psychic life". Following the operation, spontaneity, responsiveness, self-awareness, and self-control were reduced. The activity was replaced by inertia, and people were mostly left emotionally blunted and restricted in their intellectual range.


title: Lobotomy

text: The consequences of the operation have been described as "mixed". Some patients died as a result of the operation and others later committed suicide. Some were left severely brain damaged. Others were able to leave the hospital, or became more manageable within the hospital. A few people managed to return to responsible work, while at the other extreme, people were left with severe and disabling impairments. Most people fell into an intermediate group, left with some improvement of their symptoms but also with emotional and intellectual deficits to which they made a better or worse adjustment. On average, there was a mortality rate of approximately 5% during the 1940s.


title: Lobotomy

text: The lobotomy procedure could have severe negative effects on a patient's personality and ability to function independently. Lobotomy patients often show a marked reduction in initiative and inhibition. They may also exhibit difficulty imagining themselves in the position of others because of decreased cognition and detachment from society.


title: Lobotomy

text: Walter Freeman coined the term "surgically induced childhood" and used it constantly to refer to the results of lobotomy. The operation left people with an "infantile personality"; a period of maturation would then, according to Freeman, lead to recovery. In an unpublished memoir, he described how the "personality of the patient was changed in some way in the hope of rendering him more amenable to the social pressures under which he is supposed to exist." He described one 29-year-old woman as being, following lobotomy, a "smiling, lazy and satisfactory patient with the personality of an oyster" who could not remember Freeman's name and endlessly poured coffee from an empty pot. When her parents had difficulty dealing with her behaviour, Freeman advised a system of rewards (ice-cream) and punishment (smacks).


title: Lobotomy

text: In the early 20th century, the number of patients residing in mental hospitals increased significantly while little in the way of effective medical treatment was available. Lobotomy was one of a series of radical and invasive physical therapies developed in Europe at this time that signaled a break with a psychiatric culture of therapeutic nihilism that had prevailed since the late nineteenth-century. The new "heroic" physical therapies devised during this experimental era, including malarial therapy for general paresis of the insane (1917), deep sleep therapy (1920), insulin shock therapy (1933), cardiazol shock therapy (1934), and electroconvulsive therapy (1938), helped to imbue the then therapeutically moribund and demoralised psychiatric profession with a renewed sense of optimism in the curability of insanity and the potency of their craft. The success of the shock therapies, despite the considerable risk they posed to patients, also helped to accommodate psychiatrists to ever more drastic forms of medical intervention, including lobotomy.


title: Lobotomy

text: The clinician-historian Joel Braslow argues that from malarial therapy onward to lobotomy, physical psychiatric therapies "spiral closer and closer to the interior of the brain" with this organ increasingly taking "center stage as a source of disease and site of cure". For Roy Porter, once the doyen of medical history, the often violent and invasive psychiatric interventions developed during the 1930s and 1940s are indicative of both the well-intentioned desire of psychiatrists to find some medical means of alleviating the suffering of the vast number of patients then in psychiatric hospitals and also the relative lack of social power of those same patients to resist the increasingly radical and even reckless interventions of asylum doctors. Many doctors, patients and family members of the period believed that despite potentially catastrophic consequences, the results of lobotomy were seemingly positive in many instances or, were at least deemed as such when measured next to the apparent alternative of long-term institutionalisation. Lobotomy has always been controversial, but for a period of the medical mainstream, it was even feted and regarded as a legitimate last resort remedy for categories of patients who were otherwise regarded as hopeless. Today, lobotomy has become a disparaged procedure, a byword for medical barbarism and an exemplary instance of the medical trampling of patients' rights.


title: Lobotomy

text: Before the 1930s, individual doctors had infrequently experimented with novel surgical operations on the brains of those deemed insane. Most notably in 1888, the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt initiated what is commonly considered the first systematic attempt at modern human psychosurgery. He operated on six chronic patients under his care at the Swiss Préfargier Asylum, removing sections of their cerebral cortex. Burckhardt's decision to operate was informed by three pervasive views on the nature of mental illness and its relationship to the brain. First, the belief that mental illness was organic in nature, and reflected an underlying brain pathology; next, that the nervous system was organized according to an associationist model comprising an input or afferent system (a sensory center), a connecting system where information processing took place (an association center), and an output or efferent system (a motor center); and, finally, a modular conception of the brain whereby discrete mental faculties were connected to specific regions of the brain. Burckhardt's hypothesis was that by deliberately creating lesions in regions of the brain identified as association centers a transformation in behaviour might ensue. According to his model, those mentally ill might experience "excitations abnormal in quality, quantity and intensity" in the sensory regions of the brain and this abnormal stimulation would then be transmitted to the motor regions giving rise to mental pathology. He reasoned, however, that removing material from either of the sensory or motor zones could give rise to "grave functional disturbance". Instead, by targeting the association centers and creating a "ditch" around the motor region of the temporal lobe, he hoped to break their lines of communication and thus alleviate both mental symptoms and the experience of mental distress.


title: Lobotomy

text: Intending to ameliorate symptoms in those with violent and intractable conditions rather than effect a cure, Burckhardt began operating on patients in December 1888, but both his surgical methods and instruments were crude and the results of the procedure were mixed at best. He operated on six patients in total and, according to his own assessment, two experienced no change, two patients became quieter, one patient experienced epileptic convulsions and died a few days after the operation, and one patient improved. Complications included motor weakness, epilepsy, sensory aphasia and "word deafness". Claiming a success rate of 50 percent, he presented the results at the Berlin Medical Congress and published a report, but the response from his medical peers was hostile and he did no further operations.


title: Lobotomy

text: In 1912, two physicians based in Saint Petersburg, the leading Russian neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev and his younger Estonian colleague, the neurosurgeon Ludvig Puusepp, published a paper reviewing a range of surgical interventions that had been performed on the mentally ill. While generally treating these endeavours favorably, in their consideration of psychosurgery they reserved unremitting scorn for Burckhardt's surgical experiments of 1888 and opined that it was extraordinary that a trained medical doctor could undertake such an unsound procedure.


title: Lobotomy

text: The authors neglected to mention, however, that in 1910 Puusepp himself had performed surgery on the brains of three mentally ill patients, sectioning the cortex between the frontal and parietal lobes. He had abandoned these attempts because of unsatisfactory results and this experience probably inspired the invective that was directed at Burckhardt in the 1912 article. By 1937, Puusepp, despite his earlier criticism of Burckhardt, was increasingly persuaded that psychosurgery could be a valid medical intervention for the mentally disturbed. In the late 1930s, he worked closely with the neurosurgical team of the Racconigi Hospital near Turin to establish it as an early and influential centre for the adoption of leucotomy in Italy.


title: Lobotomy

text: Leucotomy was first undertaken in 1935 under the direction of the Portuguese neurologist (and inventor of the term "psychosurgery") António Egas Moniz. First developing an interest in psychiatric conditions and their somatic treatment in the early 1930s, Moniz apparently conceived a new opportunity for recognition in the development of a surgical intervention on the brain as a treatment for mental illness.


title: Lobotomy

text: The source of inspiration for Moniz's decision to hazard psychosurgery has been clouded by contradictory statements made on the subject by Moniz and others both contemporaneously and retrospectively. The traditional narrative addresses the question of why Moniz targeted the frontal lobes by way of reference to the work of the Yale neuroscientist John Fulton and, most dramatically, to a presentation Fulton made with his junior colleague Carlyle Jacobsen at the Second International Congress of Neurology held in London in 1935. Fulton's primary area of research was on the cortical function of primates and he had established America's first primate neurophysiology laboratory at Yale in the early 1930s. At the 1935 Congress, with Moniz in attendance, Fulton and Jacobsen presented two chimpanzees, named Becky and Lucy who had had frontal lobectomies and subsequent changes in behaviour and intellectual function. According to Fulton's account of the congress, they explained that before surgery, both animals, and especially Becky, the more emotional of the two, exhibited "frustrational behaviour"that is, have tantrums that could include rolling on the floor and defecatingif, because of their poor performance in a set of experimental tasks, they were not rewarded. Following the surgical removal of their frontal lobes, the behaviour of both primates changed markedly and Becky was pacified to such a degree that Jacobsen apparently stated it was as if she had joined a "happiness cult". During the question and answer section of the paper, Moniz, it is alleged, "startled" Fulton by inquiring if this procedure might be extended to human subjects suffering from mental illness. Fulton stated that he replied that while possible in theory it was surely "too formidable" an intervention for use on humans.


title: Lobotomy

text: Moniz began his experiments with leucotomy just three months after the congress had reinforced the apparent cause and effect relationship between the Fulton and Jacobsen presentation and the Portuguese neurologist's resolve to operate on the frontal lobes. As the author of this account Fulton, who has sometimes been claimed as the father of lobotomy, was later able to record that the technique had its true origination in his laboratory. Endorsing this version of events, in 1949, the Harvard neurologist Stanley Cobb remarked during his presidential address to the American Neurological Association that "seldom in the history of medicine has a laboratory observation been so quickly and dramatically translated into a therapeutic procedure". Fulton's report, penned ten years after the events described, is, however, without corroboration in the historical record and bears little resemblance to an earlier unpublished account he wrote of the congress. In this previous narrative he mentioned an incidental, private exchange with Moniz, but it is likely that the official version of their public conversation he promulgated is without foundation. In fact, Moniz stated that he had conceived of the operation some time before his journey to London in 1935, having told in confidence his junior colleague, the young neurosurgeon Pedro Almeida Lima, as early as 1933 of his psychosurgical idea. The traditional account exaggerates the importance of Fulton and Jacobsen to Moniz's decision to initiate frontal lobe surgery, and omits the fact that a detailed body of neurological research that emerged at this time suggested to Moniz and other neurologists and neurosurgeons that surgery on this part of the brain might yield significant personality changes in the mentally ill.


title: Lobotomy

text: The frontal lobes had been the object of scientific inquiry and speculation since the late 19th century. Fulton's contribution, while it may have functioned as source of intellectual support, is of itself unnecessary and inadequate as an explanation of Moniz's resolution to operate on this section of the brain. Under an evolutionary and hierarchical model of brain development it had been hypothesized that those regions associated with more recent development, such as the mammalian brain and, most especially, the frontal lobes, were responsible for more complex cognitive functions. However, this theoretical formulation found little laboratory support, as 19th-century experimentation found no significant change in animal behaviour following surgical removal or electrical stimulation of the frontal lobes. This picture of the so-called "silent lobe" changed in the period after World War I with the production of clinical reports of ex-servicemen with brain trauma. The refinement of neurosurgical techniques also facilitated increasing attempts to remove brain tumours, treat focal epilepsy in humans and led to more precise experimental neurosurgery in animal studies. Cases were reported where mental symptoms were alleviated following the surgical removal of diseased or damaged brain tissue. The accumulation of medical case studies on behavioural changes following damage to the frontal lobes led to the formulation of the concept of "Witzelsucht", which designated a neurological condition characterised by a certain hilarity and childishness in those with the condition. The picture of frontal lobe function that emerged from these studies was complicated by the observation that neurological deficits attendant on damage to a single lobe might be compensated for if the opposite lobe remained intact. In 1922, the Italian neurologist Leonardo Bianchi published a detailed report on the results of bilateral lobectomies in animals that supported the contention that the frontal lobes were both integral to intellectual function and that their removal led to the disintegration of the subject's personality. This work, while influential, was not without its critics due to deficiencies in experimental design.


title: Lobotomy

text: The first bilateral lobectomy of a human subject was performed by the American neurosurgeon Walter Dandy in 1930. The neurologist Richard Brickner reported on this case in 1932, relating that the recipient, known as "Patient A", while experiencing a blunting of affect, had no apparent decrease in intellectual function and seemed, at least to the casual observer, perfectly normal. Brickner concluded from this evidence that "the frontal lobes are not 'centers' for the intellect". These clinical results were replicated in a similar operation undertaken in 1934 by the neurosurgeon Roy Glenwood Spurling and reported on by the neuropsychiatrist Spafford Ackerly. By the mid-1930s, interest in the function of the frontal lobes reached a high-water mark. This was reflected in the 1935 neurological congress in London, which hosted as part of its deliberations, "a remarkable symposium ... on the functions of the frontal lobes". The panel was chaired by Henri Claude, a French neuropsychiatrist, who commenced the session by reviewing the state of research on the frontal lobes, and concluded that "altering the frontal lobes profoundly modifies the personality of subjects". This parallel symposium contained numerous papers by neurologists, neurosurgeons and psychologists; amongst these was one by Brickner, which impressed Moniz greatly, that again detailed the case of "Patient A". Fulton and Jacobsen's paper, presented in another session of the conference on experimental physiology, was notable in linking animal and human studies on the function of the frontal lobes. Thus, at the time of the 1935 Congress, Moniz had available to him an increasing body of research on the role of the frontal lobes that extended well beyond the observations of Fulton and Jacobsen.


title: Lobotomy

text: Nor was Moniz the only medical practitioner in the 1930s to have contemplated procedures directly targeting the frontal lobes. Although ultimately discounting brain surgery as carrying too much risk, physicians and neurologists such as William Mayo, Thierry de Martel, Richard Brickner, and Leo Davidoff had, before 1935, entertained the proposition. Inspired by Julius Wagner-Jauregg's development of malarial therapy for the treatment of general paresis of the insane, the French physician Maurice Ducosté reported in 1932 that he had injected 5 ml of malarial blood directly into the frontal lobes of over 100 paretic patients through holes drilled into the skull. He claimed that the injected paretics showed signs of "uncontestable mental and physical amelioration" and that the results for psychotic patients undergoing the procedure was also "encouraging". The experimental injection of fever-inducing malarial blood into the frontal lobes was also replicated during the 1930s in the work of Ettore Mariotti and M. Sciutti in Italy and Ferdière Coulloudon in France. In Switzerland, almost simultaneously with the commencement of Moniz's leucotomy programme, the neurosurgeon François Ody had removed the entire right frontal lobe of a catatonic schizophrenic patient. In Romania, Ody's procedure was adopted by Dimitri Bagdasar and Constantinesco working out of the Central Hospital in Bucharest. Ody, who delayed publishing his own results for several years, later rebuked Moniz for claiming to have cured patients through leucotomy without waiting to determine if there had been a "lasting remission".


title: Lobotomy

text: The theoretical underpinnings of Moniz's psychosurgery were largely commensurate with the nineteenth-century ones that had informed Burckhardt's decision to excise matter from the brains of his patients. Although in his later writings Moniz referenced both the neuron theory of Ramón y Cajal and the conditioned reflex of Ivan Pavlov, in essence he simply interpreted this new neurological research in terms of the old psychological theory of associationism. He differed significantly from Burckhardt, however in that he did not think there was any organic pathology in the brains of the mentally ill, but rather that their neural pathways were caught in fixed and destructive circuits leading to "predominant, obsessive ideas". As Moniz wrote in 1936:


title: Lobotomy

text: [The] mental troubles must have ... a relation with the formation of cellulo-connective groupings, which become more or less fixed. The cellular bodies may remain altogether normal, their cylinders will not have any anatomical alterations; but their multiple liaisons, very variable in normal people, may have arrangements more or less fixed, which will have a relation with persistent ideas and deliria in certain morbid psychic states.


title: Lobotomy

text: For Moniz, "to cure these patients", it was necessary to "destroy the more or less fixed arrangements of cellular connections that exist in the brain, and particularly those which are related to the frontal lobes", thus removing their fixed pathological brain circuits. Moniz believed the brain would functionally adapt to such injury. Unlike the position adopted by Burckhardt, it was unfalsifiable according to the knowledge and technology of the time as the absence of a known correlation between physical brain pathology and mental illness could not disprove his thesis.


title: Lobotomy

text: On 12 November 1935 at the Hospital Santa Marta in Lisbon, Moniz initiated the first of a series of operations on the brains of people with mental illnesses. The initial patients selected for the operation were provided by the medical director of Lisbon's Miguel Bombarda Mental Hospital, José de Matos Sobral Cid. As Moniz lacked training in neurosurgery and his hands were impaired by gout, the procedure was performed under general anaesthetic by Pedro Almeida Lima, who had previously assisted Moniz with his research on cerebral angiography. The intention was to remove some of the long fibres that connected the frontal lobes to other major brain centres. To this end, it was decided that Lima would trephine into the side of the skull and then inject ethanol into the "subcortical white matter of the prefrontal area" so as to destroy the connecting fibres, or association tracts, and create what Moniz termed a "frontal barrier". After the first operation was complete, Moniz considered it a success and, observing that the patient's depression had been relieved, he declared her "cured" although she was never, in fact, discharged from the mental hospital. Moniz and Lima persisted with this method of injecting alcohol into the frontal lobes for the next seven patients but, after having to inject some patients on numerous occasions to elicit what they considered a favourable result, they modified the means by which they would section the frontal lobes. For the ninth patient they introduced a surgical instrument called a leucotome; this was a cannula that was in length and in diameter. It had a retractable wire loop at one end that, when rotated, produced a diameter circular lesion in the white matter of the frontal lobe. Typically, six lesions were cut into each lobe, but, if they were dissatisfied by the results, Lima might perform several procedures, each producing multiple lesions in the left and right frontal lobes.


title: Lobotomy

text: By the conclusion of this first run of leucotomies in February 1936, Moniz and Lima had operated on twenty patients with an average period of one week between each procedure; Moniz published his findings with great haste in March of the same year. The patients were aged between 27 and 62 years of age; twelve were female and eight were male. Nine of the patients were diagnosed with depression, six with schizophrenia, two with panic disorder, and one each with mania, catatonia and manic-depression. Their most prominent symptoms were anxiety and agitation. The duration of their illness before the procedure varied from as little as four weeks to as much as 22 years, although all but four had been ill for at least one year. Patients were normally operated on the day they arrived at Moniz's clinic and returned within ten days to the Miguel Bombarda Mental Hospital. A perfunctory post-operative follow-up assessment took place anywhere from one to ten weeks following surgery. Complications were observed in each of the leucotomy patients and included: "increased temperature, vomiting, bladder and bowel incontinence, diarrhea, and ocular affections such as ptosis and nystagmus, as well as psychological effects such as apathy, akinesia, lethargy, timing and local disorientation, kleptomania, and abnormal sensations of hunger". Moniz asserted that these effects were transitory and, according to his published assessment, the outcome for these first twenty patients was that 35%, or seven cases, improved significantly, another 35% were somewhat improved and the remaining 30% (six cases) were unchanged. There were no deaths and he did not consider that any patients had deteriorated following leucotomy.


title: Lobotomy

text: Moniz rapidly disseminated his results through articles in the medical press and a monograph in 1936. Initially, however, the medical community appeared hostile to the new procedure. On 26 July 1936, one of his assistants, Diogo Furtado, gave a presentation at the Parisian meeting of the Société Médico-Psychologique on the results of the second cohort of patients leucotomised by Lima. Sobral Cid, who had supplied Moniz with the first set of patients for leucotomy from his own hospital in Lisbon, attended the meeting and denounced the technique, declaring that the patients who had been returned to his care post-operatively were "diminished" and had experienced a "degradation of personality". He also claimed that the changes Moniz observed in patients were more properly attributed to shock and brain trauma, and he derided the theoretical architecture that Moniz had constructed to support the new procedure as "cerebral mythology." At the same meeting the Parisian psychiatrist, Paul Courbon, stated he could not endorse a surgical technique that was solely supported by theoretical considerations rather than clinical observations. He also opined that the mutilation of an organ could not improve its function and that such cerebral wounds as were occasioned by leucotomy risked the later development of meningitis, epilepsy and brain abscesses. Nonetheless, Moniz's reported successful surgical treatment of 14 out of 20 patients led to the rapid adoption of the procedure on an experimental basis by individual clinicians in countries such as Brazil, Cuba, Italy, Romania and the United States during the 1930s.


title: Lobotomy

text: Throughout the remainder of the 1930s the number of leucotomies performed in most countries where the technique was adopted remained quite low. In Britain, which was later a major centre for leucotomy, only six operations had been undertaken before 1942. Generally, medical practitioners who attempted the procedure adopted a cautious approach and few patients were leucotomised before the 1940s. Italian neuropsychiatrists, who were typically early and enthusiastic adopters of leucotomy, were exceptional in eschewing such a gradualist course.


title: Lobotomy

text: Leucotomy was first reported in the Italian medical press in 1936 and Moniz published an article in Italian on the technique in the following year. In 1937, he was invited to Italy to demonstrate the procedure and for a two-week period in June of that year he visited medical centres in Trieste, Ferrara, and one close to Turinthe Racconigi Hospitalwhere he instructed his Italian neuropsychiatric colleagues on leucotomy and also oversaw several operations. Leucotomy was featured at two Italian psychiatric conferences in 1937 and over the next two years a score of medical articles on Moniz's psychosurgery was published by Italian clinicians based in medical institutions located in Racconigi, Trieste, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Pisa, Catania and Rovigo. The major centre for leucotomy in Italy was the Racconigi Hospital, where the experienced neurosurgeon Ludvig Puusepp provided a guiding hand. Under the medical directorship of Emilio Rizzatti, the medical personnel at this hospital had completed at least 200 leucotomies by 1939. Reports from clinicians based at other Italian institutions detailed significantly smaller numbers of leucotomy operations.


title: Lobotomy

text: Experimental modifications of Moniz's operation were introduced with little delay by Italian medical practitioners. Most notably, in 1937 Amarro Fiamberti, the medical director of a psychiatric institution in Varese, first devised the transorbital procedure whereby the frontal lobes were accessed through the eye sockets. Fiamberti's method was to puncture the thin layer of orbital bone at the top of the socket and then inject alcohol or formalin into the white matter of the frontal lobes through this aperture. Using this method, while sometimes substituting a leucotome for a hypodermic needle, it is estimated that he leucotomised about 100 patients in the period up to the outbreak of World War II. Fiamberti's innovation of Moniz's method would later prove inspirational for Walter Freeman's development of transorbital lobotomy.


title: Lobotomy

text: The first prefrontal leucotomy in the United States was performed at the George Washington University Hospital on 14 September 1936 by the neurologist Walter Freeman and his friend and colleague, the neurosurgeon, James W. Watts. Freeman had first encountered Moniz at the London-hosted Second International Congress of Neurology in 1935 where he had presented a poster exhibit of the Portuguese neurologist's work on cerebral angiography. Fortuitously occupying a booth next to Moniz, Freeman, delighted by their chance meeting, formed a highly favourable impression of Moniz, later remarking upon his "sheer genius". According to Freeman, if they had not met in person it is highly unlikely that he would have ventured into the domain of frontal lobe psychosurgery. Freeman's interest in psychiatry was the natural outgrowth of his appointment in 1924 as the medical director of the Research Laboratories of the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, known colloquially as St Elizabeth's. Ambitious and a prodigious researcher, Freeman, who favoured an organic model of mental illness causation, spent the next several years exhaustively, yet ultimately fruitlessly, investigating a neuropathological basis for insanity. Chancing upon a preliminary communication by Moniz on leucotomy in the spring of 1936, Freeman initiated a correspondence in May of that year. Writing that he had been considering psychiatric brain surgery previously, he informed Moniz that, "having your authority I expect to go ahead". Moniz, in return, promised to send him a copy of his forthcoming monograph on leucotomy and urged him to purchase a leucotome from a French supplier.


title: Lobotomy

text: Upon receipt of Moniz's monograph, Freeman reviewed it anonymously for the "Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry". Praising the text as one whose "importance can scarcely be overestimated", he summarised Moniz's rationale for the procedure as based on the fact that while no physical abnormality of cerebral cell bodies was observable in the mentally ill, their cellular interconnections may harbour a "fixation of certain patterns of relationship among various groups of cells" and that this resulted in obsessions, delusions and mental morbidity. While recognising that Moniz's thesis was inadequate, for Freeman it had the advantage of circumventing the search for diseased brain tissue in the mentally ill by instead suggesting that the problem was a functional one of the brain's internal wiring where relief might be obtained by severing problematic mental circuits.


title: Lobotomy

text: In 1937 Freeman and Watts adapted Lima and Moniz's surgical procedure, and created the "Freeman-Watts technique", also known as the "Freeman-Watts standard prefrontal lobotomy," which they styled the "precision method".


title: Lobotomy

text: The Freeman–Watts prefrontal lobotomy still required drilling holes in the skull, so surgery had to be performed in an operating room by trained neurosurgeons. Walter Freeman believed this surgery would be unavailable to those he saw as needing it most: patients in state mental hospitals that had no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets. Freeman wanted to simplify the procedure so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals.


title: Lobotomy

text: Inspired by the work of Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti, Freeman at some point conceived of approaching the frontal lobes through the eye sockets instead of through drilled holes in the skull. In 1945 he took an icepick from his own kitchen and began testing the idea on grapefruit and cadavers. This new "transorbital" lobotomy involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing the point of a thin surgical instrument (often called an orbitoclast or leucotome, although quite different from the wire loop leucotome described above) under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket. A mallet was used to drive the orbitoclast through the thin layer of bone and into the brain along the plane of the bridge of the nose, around 15 degrees toward the interhemispherical fissure. The orbitoclast was malleted 5 centimeters (2 in) into the frontal lobe, and then pivoted 40 degrees at the orbit perforation so the tip cut toward the opposite side of the head (toward the nose). The instrument was returned to the neutral position and sent a further 2 centimeters ( in) into the brain, before being pivoted around 28 degrees each side, to cut outwards and again inwards. (In a more radical variation at the end of the last cut described, the butt of the orbitoclast was forced upwards so the tool cut vertically down the side of the cortex of the interhemispheric fissure; the "Deep Frontal Cut".) All cuts were designed to transect the white fibrous matter connecting the cortical tissue of the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus. The leucotome was then withdrawn and the procedure repeated on the other side.


title: Lobotomy

text: Freeman performed the first transorbital lobotomy on a live patient in 1946. Its simplicity suggested the possibility of carrying it out in mental hospitals lacking the surgical facilities required for the earlier, more complex procedure. (Freeman suggested that, where conventional anesthesia was unavailable, electroconvulsive therapy be used to render the patient unconscious.) In 1947, the Freeman and Watts partnership ended, as the latter was disgusted by Freeman's modification of the lobotomy from a surgical operation into a simple "office" procedure. Between 1940 and 1944, 684 lobotomies were performed in the United States. However, because of the fervent promotion of the technique by Freeman and Watts, those numbers increased sharply towards the end of the decade. In 1949, the peak year for lobotomies in the US, 5,074 procedures were undertaken, and by 1951 over 18,608 individuals had been lobotomized in the US.


title: Lobotomy

text: In the United States, approximately 40,000 people were lobotomized and in England, 17,000 lobotomies were performed. According to one estimate, in the three Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden a combined figure of approximately 9,300 lobotomies were performed. Scandinavian hospitals lobotomized 2.5 times as many people per capita as hospitals in the US. According to another estimate, Sweden lobotomized at least 4,500 people between 1944 and 1966, mainly women. This figure includes young children. And in Norway, there were 2,005 known lobotomies. In Denmark, there were 4,500 known lobotomies. In Japan, the majority of lobotomies were performed on children with behaviour problems. The Soviet Union banned the practice in 1950 on moral grounds. In Germany, it was performed only a few times. By the late 1970s, the practice of lobotomy had generally ceased, although it continued as late as the 1980s in France.


title: Lobotomy

text: As early as 1944, an author in the "Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease" remarked: "The history of prefrontal lobotomy has been brief and stormy. Its course has been dotted with both violent opposition and with slavish, unquestioning acceptance." Beginning in 1947 Swedish psychiatrist Snorre Wohlfahrt evaluated early trials, reporting that it is "distinctly hazardous to schizophrenics" and that lobotomy was "still too imperfect to enable us, with its aid, to venture on a general offensive against chronic cases of mental disorder", stating further that "Psychosurgery has as yet failed to discover its precise indications and contraindications and the methods must unfortunately still be regarded as rather crude and hazardous in many respects." In 1948 Norbert Wiener, the author of "", said: "[P]refrontal lobotomy ... has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier."


title: Lobotomy

text: Concerns about lobotomy steadily grew. Soviet psychiatrist Vasily Gilyarovsky criticized lobotomy and the mechanistic brain localization assumption used to carry out lobotomy:


title: Lobotomy

text: The Soviet Union officially banned the procedure in 1950 on the initiative of Gilyarovsky. Doctors in the Soviet Union concluded that the procedure was "contrary to the principles of humanity" and through lobotomy' an insane person is changed into an idiot". By the 1970s, numerous countries had banned the procedure, as had several US states.


title: Lobotomy

text: In 1977, the US Congress, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, created the National Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to investigate allegations that psychosurgeryincluding lobotomy techniqueswas used to control minorities and restrain individual rights. The committee concluded that some extremely limited and properly performed psychosurgery could have positive effects.


title: Lobotomy

text: Torsten Wiesel has called the award of the Nobel Prize to Moniz an "astounding [error] of judgment}.. a terrible mistake",


title: Lobotomy

text: and there have been calls for the Nobel Foundation to rescind the award. Foundation has not done so, and its website hosts an article defending lobotomy.


title: Lobotomy

text: Lobotomies have been featured in several literary and cinematic presentations that both reflected society's attitude towards the procedure and, at times, changed it. Writers and film-makers have played a pivotal role in turning public sentiment against the procedure.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a 2021 action horror film written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Adapted from the stories of the first and second games by Capcom, it serves as a reboot of the "Resident Evil" film series and is the seventh live-action film based on the video game series. The film stars Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, and Neal McDonough. Set in 1998, it follows a group of survivors trying to survive during a zombie outbreak in the small town of Raccoon City.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Development took place in early 2017, after "" was released, with producer James Wan expressing interest in the project. Later, Constantin Film chairman Martin Moszkowicz said that a reboot of the film series was in development. In the same month, Wan was called to produce the reboot with a script by Greg Russo; subsequently, Roberts was hired as both writer and director and both Wan and Russo left the project. Filming began on October 17, 2020, in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The film underwent reshoots in May 2021.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" had its world premiere at the Grand Rex in Paris on November 19, 2021, and was theatrically released on November 24, 2021, in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, with its faithfulness to the first two games being praised, but was criticized for its script, casting and special effects. It grossed over $42 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In the 1980s, Claire Redfield and her older brother Chris are children living at the Raccoon City Orphanage. Claire befriends Lisa Trevor, a disfigured girl who has been experimented on by Dr. William Birkin, an employee for the Umbrella Corporation, who oversees the orphanage and takes children for his own experimental research. Claire escapes from Birkin when she is selected to participate in an experiment. In 1998, Claire returns to Raccoon City, hitchhiking in a semi-truck. The truck driver accidentally hits a woman in the middle of the road. While Claire and the driver are arguing, the woman disappears. The truck driver's Dobermann licks the blood left behind, and over time begins to foam at the mouth and becomes erratic. At a diner, rookie police officer Leon S. Kennedy notices that the diner's owner has blood coming out of her eyes. Claire heads to Chris's home to warn him about Umbrella's experiments, revealing journalist Ben Bertolucci as her source.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: After Chris leaves for the police station, a child breaks into the house, running from his mother, who attacks Claire; both are erratic and bloody. Claire escapes from them on Chris's motorcycle. At the police station, the STARS Alpha team meet with Chief Brian Irons and he explains that Bravo team went missing while investigating a death at the remote Spencer Mansion. The Alpha team, composed of Chris, Jill Valentine, Richard Aiken, Brad Vickers, and Albert Wesker, is sent to the mansion by helicopter to investigate. Unknown to his teammates, Wesker is an operative for an unidentified party, tasked with stealing Birkin's virus, using inside knowledge to navigate the mansion. Inside, Chris and Richard encounter zombies eating the bodies of the Bravo team while Brad gets bitten by a zombie and crashes their helicopter into the mansion trying to fly away. Wesker saves Jill from a zombie before leaving her; Richard is eaten while Chris battles the horde, reuniting with Jill. The pair flee into the secret passage Wesker unlocked.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Meanwhile, the truck driver, bitten by his dog, transforms into a zombie and crashes his truck into the police station. Chief Irons tries to drive out of the city but is fired on by Umbrella guards attempting to contain the outbreak. Returning to the station, Irons is attacked by the truck driver's zombie dog but Claire rescues him. Claire and Leon retrieve weapons and encounter Bertolucci locked in a cell, who is then bitten by a zombie inmate. The station becomes overrun by zombies, and Leon, Claire, and Irons escape to the Orphanage, looking for a secret Umbrella tunnel leading to the mansion. A Licker kills Irons and attacks Leon, but he is saved by Lisa who recognizes Claire and gives them the keys to the secret passage. The pair discover the secret lab where Umbrella was experimenting on children like the Ashford Twins. Wesker encounters Dr. Birkin and his family deep inside the building. In the ensuing scuffle, Wesker is shot by Birkin, shoots him back, and then kills Birkin's wife in self-defense. When Wesker hesitates to pull the trigger on their child Sherry, Jill shoots Wesker.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Before dying, Wesker tells Jill to escape via the underground train before the Umbrella Corporation destroys the city, while Birkin injects himself with the "G-Virus". Birkin begins to mutate and attacks Chris, before being shot down by Claire who has arrived at the lab with Leon. Chris, Sherry, Jill, Claire and Leon escape and board the train, but are derailed when Raccoon City and the Spencer Mansion are destroyed, allowing a mutated monster version of Birkin to reach them. It attacks the train and grabs Claire, but she stabs its face with her knife and gets released. Chris shoots the monster but runs out of bullets; Leon then destroys it with a rocket launcher. As the Corporation states that there were zero civilian survivors in the aftermath of the destruction, the five survivors walk out of the train tunnel, leaving Raccoon City behind. In a mid-credits scene, Wesker awakens in a body bag, unable to see anything. A mysterious figure hands him sunglasses and introduces herself as Ada Wong.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Additionally, Lily Gao cameos as Ada Wong, a mysterious spy, during a mid-credits scene. Marina Mazepa portrays Lisa Trevor, one of Umbrella's experiments. Janet Porter plays Annette Birkin, William's wife, and Holly De Barros portrays Sherry Birkin, their daughter. Chad Rook portrays Richard Aiken, and Nathan Dales plays Brad Vickers, two members of the STARS Alpha Team, while Sammy Azero appears as Enrico Marini, and Dylan Taylor as Kevin Dooley, two members of the STARS Bravo Team. Josh Cruddas portrays Ben Bertolucci, a conspiracy theorist investigating the Umbrella Corporation, and Pat Thornton plays the trucker who helps Claire. Héloïse Catherine and Sophia Ann Pead Gavin appear as Alexia and Alfred Ashford, respectively.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Pre-production took place in early 2017 while "" was still in theatres, with Constantin Film chairman Martin Moszkowicz saying that a reboot of the series was in development, and producer James Wan expressing interest in the project. Greg Russo was attached as writer in 2017. Russo, who was also attached to write the script for "Mortal Kombat" (2021) at the time, worked with Wan in creating a "Resident Evil" story he considered to be "brutal and horrifying", and drew inspiration from the 2017 video game "", though he would later clarify he only drew on the tones of the game – "scary, isolated, alone" – rather than the story itself. Russo wanted Moonlight Sonata, a composition featured in several "Resident Evil" games, to feature in the opening credits. At one point, it would have been an actual sequel to the game continuing on from Ethan and Mia Winters' experiences in Louisiana. Constantin, however, was not happy with this script, feeling the game was too recent and its potential failure could harm film sales. Seeking alternate story ideas, Constantin proposed the incorporation at one point of time-travel. Ultimately, Wan and Russo decided to leave the project citing creative differences and their departures were confirmed at the end of the year.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In December 2018, it was announced that Johannes Roberts was attached to write and direct the film. In August 2019, Roberts told "Screen Rant" that the reboot would be "super, super scary" and more faithful to the games than the previous films. In a statement to "Deadline Hollywood", Roberts said the film would be based on "Resident Evil" (1996) and "Resident Evil 2" (1998):


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In early drafts, the screenplay was ambitious, incorporating a variety of mutants from the first two games into the narrative even if only passively. The story was from the start intended as an ensemble piece comparable to "", following several major characters in the film as their paths converge. Over the course of 2019 and 2020 the film script was repeatedly altered, keeping the main story but removing a number of CG-heavy elements, condensing the supporting cast and tweaking the protagonists' arcs. Earlier drafts also included more original characters, monsters and locations from the games, before Roberts had to make changes to his script after the budget was cut from $40 million to $25 million. Some of the cuts and changes were made so late that most of the concept artwork done by Daniel Carrasco for the monsters to be featured was finished, including Hunters, Chimeras, Crimson Heads, Pale Heads, giant spiders, Neptune (giant shark), Tyrant (aka Mr. X), and others.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Previous drafts also had more character and plot scenes, including more backstory for Raccoon City and build up to the outbreak, more scenes which took place in the mansion, and additional scenes with Leon, chief Irons, and Birkin and his family. Ada Wong had more scenes between her and Wesker, and there was more of a focus on his betrayal and friendship with Jill and Chris. He was killed by a mutated Birkin during the ending battle, not by Jill like in the final film, and his resurrection was meant to be part of the ending and not a post-credit scene.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Originally, Claire and Chris had no connection with Birkin or Ben Bertolucci, this was added later to help streamline the story after other script changes. The characters were also closer to their original video game versions; Jill wasn't written as a reckless wildcard and Claire wasn't a conspiracy theorist who already knew of Umbrella's intentions. Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers and other characters from the games were originally in the scripts, and some had death scenes written for them. Some of the action scenes were cut down or changed, mostly due to budget cuts, such as a scene where Lisa Trevor sacrifices herself attacking Birkin while everyone else escapes on the train.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: On October 8, 2020, a few days before filming started, Robbie Amell posted a picture of himself on Twitter with a script for the film, when it was simply titled "Resident Evil". The script's cover page was dated 30th September, 2020, and was listed as shooting draft "Version 7.2", meaning there were at least six earlier versions, which still had several revisions done to it that same month.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Inspired by John Carpenter's films, including "Halloween", "Assault on Precinct 13", and "The Fog", the filmmaker explained that the story was divided between two main locations: Spencer Mansion from the first game and the Raccoon Police Department, which first appeared in "Resident Evil 2". Roberts chose the tone for the remake of the second game as a model for the film. Although director Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich released six commercially successful films based on the games between 2002 and 2017, Roberts emphasized that his version was different from the series that preceded it:


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In early 2020, casting was underway but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, "Full Circle Cinema" reported that the studio was eyeing Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, and Harris Dickinson for the roles of the Redfield siblings Chris and Claire and Leon S. Kennedy. On October 6, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that Scodelario and Hannah John-Kamen had been cast as Claire and Jill Valentine, alongside Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, and Neal McDonough as Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Leon S. Kennedy, and William Birkin, respectively. That November, Donal Logue was cast as Chief Brian Irons, alongside Chad Rook as Richard Aiken, and Lily Gao as Ada Wong.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In Japan, Capcom later confirmed the characters will be dubbed by voice actors different from the Anderson films. For example, Chris and Claire are voiced by Subaru Kimura and Fairouz Ai instead of Hiroki Tōchi and Hiroe Oka.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Principal photography began in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada on October 17, 2020, with Maxime Alexandre serving as cinematographer. Filming was completed on December 24, 2020. In March 2021, Roberts revealed the full title as "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City". In May 2021, Amell revealed that the film was undergoing reshoots in Toronto and Hamilton.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: While it wasn't revealed what was cut, added or changed during reshoots, trailers for the film show several unreleased scenes, including an additional scene with Lisa Trevor in Raccoon City Orphanage where she is moving her arms unnaturally, more daytime shots of Raccoon City, an extended road block scene showing citizens being fired upon by Umbrella soldiers, and an additional scene with William Birkin in the lab. Trailers also include cut dialogue from Claire, like her saying they have to expose Umbrella and that "it's going down". Behind-the-scenes photos also show Gun Shop Kendo, another location from the original video games not in the final film, and no details are known about any deleted scenes involving the gun shop. Other promotional stills and behind-the-scenes pictures show more deleted scenes, like Ada talking with Wesker inside RPD station before he and others go to the helicopter, and the head of Tyrant (Mr. X) in a jar inside Birkin's lab.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: The film score was composed by Mark Korven. Milan Records and Sony Classical has released the soundtrack.