🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly break for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret 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 previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action 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 at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to