🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another talk in 2026.

There is never any time off for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

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

That certainly seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy 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 a long period, the thought he would be content with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will delight many on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to