🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to improve. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, does he need a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to