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"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails 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 many years, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably trigger howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to