🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk next year.

There is never any time off for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would take his term from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to change. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to