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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

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

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable 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, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set 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 major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, does he need a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir 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 obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to