🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to