🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, 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 past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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