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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out this year.

But Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting no one would remove his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to get better. He sought to persuade me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to