🔗 Share this article

"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would take his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But even though 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 circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale 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 possible peace.

His big point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, does he need a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM 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 outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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 inviting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails 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 comfortable with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to