🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same seat by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if the discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that many of his colleagues believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

However Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I plan to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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