🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would take his term 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 leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may not want 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, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

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 following an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not realising 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 gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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