🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

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

That certainly seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his political fate are poised to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would take his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed 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 about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to