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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if the interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely 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 our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede 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 one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said 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 major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard 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 some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, 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 just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been bubbling pressure 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 more concrete commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to