🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat in 2026.

There is never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

But Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting 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 tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls 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 team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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