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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and oust him this year.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting no one would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge 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 tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He tried to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

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

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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