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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is rarely ever break for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He sought to persuade me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret 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 statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on 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 idea he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to