🔗 Share this article

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

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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 perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to