🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in this seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

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

Starmer 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 evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to