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"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never truly break for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused 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 the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to