🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for those in the top job. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning 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 be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to improve. He sought to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, does he need a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes 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 idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to