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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk next year.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he said.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government put in place during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political direction, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" 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 acquires 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 many years, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to