🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering 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.

The Spring Test

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

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration put in place during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, should he consider a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting evident political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to