🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to