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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if the conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the PM is that many of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, does he need a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to