🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in the same position by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

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

That certainly appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out this year.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to