🔗 Share this article

"I'll remain in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his standing are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I plan to be at the forefront," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time 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 guard a possible peace.

His core message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

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

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" 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 – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's strikes 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 implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to