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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the conversation went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and get him out in 2026.

However Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I intend to lead us," he said.

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting clear political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

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 criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the results that flowed from Brexit.

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