🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning 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 admit 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 walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

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

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 only because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – such as 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 courting clear political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please some on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to