🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if the interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little downtime 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 saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop 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 be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably eager for things to change. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me 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 outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

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