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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat next year.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's 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.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his standing are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

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 attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, 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 unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant 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, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to