🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I plan to lead us," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally eager for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret 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 backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to