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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration put in place during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central message is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, should he consider a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to