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"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret 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 comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. 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 opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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