🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks 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 evident political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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