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"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, noting that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what 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 our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

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

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken 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 encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some called for him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move 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