🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat next year.

There is rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government implemented during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting evident political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely trigger protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to