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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his allies being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting no one would strip his term 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 lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

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

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 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 some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting clear political dangers as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails 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 a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded denounce it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been growing tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to