🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

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

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "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 clear political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy 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 content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the entire story at the moment".

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

And there has long been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to