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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, 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 coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, 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 as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to