🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, 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 a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, even if one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to improve. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

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

There has also always been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from 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