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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if the interview was successful, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific 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 time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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 government is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

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 controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

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

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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