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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the conversation went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another conversation in 2026.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his standing are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He sought to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk 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 his career, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to