🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his standing are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

However Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his term from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication 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 many years, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to