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"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

There is never any time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political perils as the year gets going. 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 thought he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

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