🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

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

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although 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 scenario under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal 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 discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

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

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of 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 – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to