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"I'll remain in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir appears 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.

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

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

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

"This is the battle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

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

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been bubbling desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to