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Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, has joked that he and his son tricked Declan Rice into signing for Arsenal.

Starmer is a season ticket holder at the Emirates Stadium and regularly attends away fixtures.

Midfielder Rice joined Arsenal from West Ham last summer in a deal worth £105m in a significant transfer coup for the club, and has helped drive Mikel Arteta’s side in their chase for the Premier League title this season.

Recalling meeting the England international with his son while Rice was still a West Ham player, a jesting Starmer has claimed to have conned the 25-year-old into signing a contract.

“So, when we played away at West Ham last year and Declan was still a West Ham player I took my son,” the Labour leader told The Telegraph.

“Mark Noble, Mr West Ham [now the club’s sporting director], took us down to meet Declan. And so my boy had his programme open ready for signing and obviously we put the contract [for Arsenal] in underneath! Declan signed it and thought he was signing the programme, but actually he was signing for Arsenal!”

Arsenal currently sit top of the Premier League table, one point ahead of Manchester City, who have a game in hand on their title rivals.

Under the guidance of former midfielder Arteta, the club have been transformed back into regular challengers domestically two decades on from their last league success in the 2003/04 season.

The club were crowned champions then having gone the entire campaign undefeated, and while it remains Starmer’s happiest memory as an Arsenal fan, the current crop of title chasers have also captivated the Leader of the Opposition.

“This is some of the best football certainly that I have seen for a while,” Starmer said. “This is more intense. It is a more integrated squad. Arteta has built a real squad.

“I give you an example: we meet up with mates before the game. The usual discussion ‘what’s the score going to be? Who’s going to score?’ And afterwards there is another discussion ‘who was player of the match?’ There’s genuine debate about that every week.

“There’s never a single player… I think that is really amazing. You are not every week saying ‘it’s Thierry Henry; it’s Aubameyang’ or whoever it is.”

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