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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly break for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

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

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to change. He tried to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

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

But despite encountering calls from many directions for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

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

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance 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 was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to