🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our conversation went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely 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 the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his standing are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, 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.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to get better. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration implemented during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

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

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably trigger accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

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