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"I will remain in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely 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.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to change. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, 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 outcry when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action 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 far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Opponents wanted him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

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