If Keir Starmer weren’t the prime minister, his behavior at a primary school in England this week might have landed him in detention.
During a classroom visit on Monday to promote a free school meals program, Mr. Starmer led a roomful of first graders in the “6-7” gesture, the viral meme that has found mass appeal among generation alpha — before a teacher told him it was prohibited.
“You know, children get into trouble today for saying that in our school,” a school employee is seen telling Mr. Starmer in a video posted to his Instagram account.
“Oh, do they?” the prime minister said, sounding a bit like a chastised pupil. “Sorry about that.”
Mr. Starmer later attempted to deflect some of the blame. “I didn’t start it, Miss,” he says in a subsequent clip.
The prime minister was sitting at a table reading with a group of students at Welland Academy in Peterborough, roughly 100 miles north of London, when one of them pointed out that she was looking at pages six and seven in the book.
“Six-seven, yeah,” Mr. Starmer said. He immediately started doing the accompanying up-down hand motion that every parent of a young child now knows all too well. (For the blissfully uninitiated, it looks something like a mime juggling.)
Whether Mr. Starmer started the gesture in the classroom was unclear from the video posted by his office. But once the children got going, he enthusiastically encouraged it.
“Everybody here, six-seven,” he seemed to say, looking around the classroom. “Are you doing page six-seven?”
Soon, much of the class had joined in, moving their arms and chanting the phrase.
“We’re not over that yet,” an adult seated at a table nearby is heard saying, a bit wearily. “It’s still very much a thing.”
The children were still gesticulating and reciting the phrase as Mr. Starmer, 63, stood up to leave. “That was a bit wild,” he said to a woman who appeared to be a school employee.
His face turned from smiling to sheepish when she informed him of his misdeed.
The phrase, which has perplexed parents and educators across the English-speaking world and beyond, has been traced to the song “Doot Doot (6 7)” by the rapper Skrilla. Its meaning, however, is elusive. Dictionary.com made the term its word of the year for 2025, saying that its most defining feature was that it was “impossible to define.”
For Mr. Starmer, the lighthearted moment was likely to be a welcome reprieve during a turbulent time. His poll numbers have plummeted amid a storm of economic and political troubles, and a public debate has erupted within his own party over whether to replace him.
The classroom episode made Mr. Starmer the latest in a long line of politicians who have accidentally gone viral during interactions with schoolchildren.
In 2019, the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, beat a group of children at dominoes, and a photo of him celebrating was widely ridiculed online. In 2015, Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, became a meme in his own right when a photo showed a young student with her head on the table while he was reading to her.
Jonathan Wolfe is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news.
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