🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if the interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Shortly before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to