🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same position by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than observed 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 bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges 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 prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication 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 a long period, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to