🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

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

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back 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.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to