🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

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

True – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to get better. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration implemented during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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 after an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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 inviting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to