🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just some a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and get him out this year.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would take his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried 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.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM 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 past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to