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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is never truly time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and oust him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir 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 facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing 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 such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to