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"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps 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 although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted 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 previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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