🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never truly time off for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his standing are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is 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 many months, has everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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 inviting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication 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 his career, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to