🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his fortunes are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to improve. He aimed to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to