🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another chat in 2026.

There is rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want 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 one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government implemented during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed 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 was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me 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 statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention 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 thought he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

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