🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another chat next year.

There is rarely ever downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, 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 indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

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

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to change. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the process" 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 risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been growing tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to