🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk next year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

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

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would remove his term from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government put in place 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 set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister 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 pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting clear political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been bubbling desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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