🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in the coming year.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Shortly before we sat down, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, 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, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out this year.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit 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 resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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