🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

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

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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