🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President 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.

When our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his standing are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to change. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is courting obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- 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.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to