🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if the conversation went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his term from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

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

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace 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 administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted 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 after an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 idea he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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