🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. 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 a long period, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

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