🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if the conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just some relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.

However Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to improve. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration put in place during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular 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 recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister 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 past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to