🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never truly break for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, 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 typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his standing are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out this year.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting no one 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 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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