🔗 Share this article

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

For a PM, there's never truly break for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed 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 potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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 controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to