🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

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

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting evident political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will delight many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to