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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

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

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

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing no one 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 fight of our times and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with increased political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably trigger howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to