🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I intend to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to assure me, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir 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 perils as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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