🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite us into his official residence for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably eager for things to improve. He tried to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, should he consider a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

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