🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

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

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I plan to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally eager for things to get better. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably trigger accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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