🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

There is never any downtime for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

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 after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action 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 comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to