🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if our interview went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to change. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" 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 – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing clear political perils as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires 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 his career, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

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