🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the PM is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably eager for things to improve. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to