🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing no one would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the fight of our times and I intend to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. 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 implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally eager for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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