🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing no one would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of 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 – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new jeopardy 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 his career, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been simmering desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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