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"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat in 2026.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

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

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would take his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

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

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing calls from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to