🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly break for those in the top job. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – 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 suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, even if one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk 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 content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please some on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to