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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His core message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a different script?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting clear political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails 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 a long period, the idea he would be content with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will delight many on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to