🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if the conversation was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk in 2026.

There is never any time off for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

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

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 thought he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

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