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"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed 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 this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

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