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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, noting that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

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

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister 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 councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration implemented during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, 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 time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires 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 content with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to