🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

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

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to change. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

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

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

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

Regrets and Risks

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

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on 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 his career, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

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