🔗 Share this article

"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, noting that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May across 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.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration implemented during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

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 after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to