🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is rarely ever time off for leaders. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming 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.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

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

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention 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 thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to