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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his political fate are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to admit 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 walk away, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership 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 anxious for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political dangers 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 former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to