🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his standing are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one 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 its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally impatient for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration put in place during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision 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