🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the interview went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had occurred 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 far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to