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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting nobody would take his term from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to get better. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration put in place during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to