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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, 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 held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back 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.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed 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 this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

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