🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I plan to lead us," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

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 statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires 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 notion he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Some wanted him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to