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"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our interview was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to