🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

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

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat 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 disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite facing calls from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

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

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy 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 failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to