🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if the conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

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