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"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing no one would take his term from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major 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.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" 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 – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify 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 unfolds. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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