🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit 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 walk away, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret 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 made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

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

Some wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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