🔗 Share this article

"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want 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 walk away, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally eager for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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