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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir 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 clear political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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