🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk next year.

There is never any time off for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his standing are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to improve. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, does he need a different script?

No administration, 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 just because governing is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "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 courting obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's 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 followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to