🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

But Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, does he need a new narrative?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes 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 comfortable with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to