🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

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

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, 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 although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, 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 partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to