🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his standing are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to improve. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, 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 problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy 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 not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

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