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"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally eager for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, 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.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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