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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might invite us into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

There is rarely ever break for leaders. Shortly before we sat down, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I plan to be at the forefront," he said.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, does he need a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship 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 was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to