Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg New Year interview: unpopularity, the EU, asylum hotels, Ukraine and Venezuela

Prime Minister, 2026 could transform or perhaps even terminate your leadership. So I wonder what's your New Year's resolution?

You seem very cheerful and some people might be almost surprised that you're optimistic because you've had a very torid time. I mean, I thought your resolution might be that you're still sitting in that seat by 2027.

And if this long form interview works, we can try it again in January of next year as well. In September, we had a bit of a similar conversation. You said, "Look, I just need the space to do the job. Give me time. You'll show people." And since then, actually, your ratings have got worse. More of your plans had to be ditched by your political decision-making. Even at the Royal Variety performance, someone impersonating you was booed. Now, by many measures, you are historically unpopular, even more unpopular than Liz Truss. Do you acknowledge that at the beginning of this year?

But isn't it also the case that there have been an awful lot of unforced errors in your government? This is not just about people's impatience, which you say you understand. I mean, even just in the last few days, I wonder, are you sorry that you wrote you were delighted that a British Egyptian activist, Allah Abdul Fata, was back in the UK when he'd previously said killing any colonialists, especially Zionists, was heroic. He also said there was no genocide against the Jews by the Nazis. Are you sorry you welcomed him back to the UK?

But it's almost impossible to understand that no one in the government had bothered to check what he'd said before and then that the prime minister of this country says he's delighted to welcome somebody back who'd expressed those views. Are you sorry you did?

Let's then talk about the economy in a bit more detail. You've already referenced it. Now, you promised that you would use the power that you have in this building to get the economy growing. But on one of the most fundamental measures of that, it's becoming harder for people to get a job. Unemployment is going up. And many people in the business community say that's because you made a basic mistake at the beginning because you made it more expensive to give someone a job. and rising unemployment is the consequence. They're right, aren't they?

But just at the very end of 2025, the 31 billion pound deal that you had hailed with Donald Trump signing it at checkers that was put on ice. And a lot of businesses, frankly, we hear from them all the time, are really hacked off with one of the things that you've done. And I just wonder why you think it is that the economy is not grown in the way that you hoped it would. Because your critics can give a long list. They can say jacking up taxes. They can say more regulation, making it more expensive to hire people. Why do you think it's been more sluggish than you hoped? Because we both know that's true.

There are a lot of people in your party, um, even some people in your own cabinet who quite openly suggest that actually you should do something much more radical to help the economies that should go pursue a customs union with the EU. And you've ruled that out many times. Do you still rule it out? Because it feels like your government's been warming up to that idea a bit.

But what's next?

So what do you mean by that? So countries like Switzerland and Norway have access to the single market which is the one of the biggest economic trading zones in the world a very important one but leaving the single market was one of the cornerstones of leaving the EU. So what exactly do you mean by being closer to the single market because anyone else who has access has to follow their rules? Yeah. And they also have to allow freedom of movement where an unlimited number of EU citizens could come once again and live in this country. So what exactly do you mean?

Would you be willing to revisit freedom of movement allowing EU citizens with an with no limit to come to the UK again?

and it's going to cost 55 570 million pounds?

For your leadership to, you know, get yourself together, get yourself out of the doldrums in the polls, which have been very serious over the last 18 months, you need people to have faith in you, don't you?

And you promised people that you would smash the gangs. Now, the numbers of small boat crossings actually has started going up again. The number of people being housed in asylum hotels, which you've condemned as a terrible idea for everybody concerned for those asylum seekers and the communities involved. The numbers have been going up. Again, you're not remotely succeeding in your mission to smash the gangs, are you? I mean, even you say asylum hotels where your promises to end them by the close them by the end of the parliament. That's 2029. It's another three years.

And I want to talk about what's happening around the rest of the world. And you know, immigration is one facet of that. You need to have relationships with other countries to deal with it. But I know just before we sat down today, you spoke to President Zilinski this morning and over the Christmas period, he said there was a 90% chance of a peace deal. Do you feel like 2026 could be the year for peace in Ukraine? Is that what people could start to believe?

And do you believe that America alongside European allies like the UK will stand ready to give a security guarantee for 15 years, 20 years? Even President Zilinski said he wants 50 years.

How do we integrate that?

And you've certainly devoted a lot of time to that and you've been incredibly clear always that Vladimir Putin's attack on a sovereign country of Ukraine was wrong and ought to be condemned. What about President Trump's attack on a sovereign country of Venezuela? The White House has said that they captured Maduro and they struck his country. So there's a lot we don't know, but we do know that. So will you condemn that action against the sovereign state?

But we we we do know enough here that the US by its own admission has struck a sovereign state. They have captured the leader of a sovereign state. Other political leaders in this country have already condemned it. Even Naj Faraj who I know you have a very dim view of has said it's probably against international law. So can you say that?

But I know that you worry about global global turmoil in all sorts of different ways. By doing this kind of thing and having been accused by lots of people of multiple abuses of power, isn't your friend Donald Trump contributing to that global turmoil?

Are there any circumstances under which if there was a leadership challenge to you after May that you would walk away or would you fight it under any circumstances?

There have also been many many criticisms of you and your chopping and changing and ditching policies and you turning on things and having all sorts of different strategies that never quite seem to stick. And it's been fascinating listening to you at length today. You seem pretty calm. You seem pretty confident. Maybe to some people's ears you might sound a bit complacent.

Do you know how much political trouble you've really been in?