🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if the discussion went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

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 protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – 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 fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to