🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the discussion went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

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 protest, perhaps 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 even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said 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 major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting evident political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to