🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

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

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

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

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

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government put in place during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as 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 more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. 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 ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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