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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

There is never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his political fate are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – 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 stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a specific 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 full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been growing tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to