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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his political fate are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting no one would remove his term from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to