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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never truly time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He sought to persuade me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat 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 stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as 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 fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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