🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify 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 unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to