🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

There is rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to improve. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, does he need a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even 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 backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded denounce it before 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 always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to