🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in 2026.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

But Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, 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 be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration put in place during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship 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 opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to