🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to get better. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to