🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if the conversation went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just some a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to get better. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, does he need a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to