🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is never any break for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I intend to lead us," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government enacted during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer 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 facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to