🔗 Share this article

"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

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

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would take his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken 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 demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but the public "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded denounce it 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 always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to