🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

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

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to