🔗 Share this article

"I'll be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if the interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

There is never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would take his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to change. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central argument is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

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

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk 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 many years, the thought he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to 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 always been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake 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 vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to