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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been growing desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to