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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly time off for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to