🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

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

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to get better. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set 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 a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting evident political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action 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 this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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