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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. 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 stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to change. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in such significant 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, has everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for 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 previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting clear political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication 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 thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

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

There has also long been simmering tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to