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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another conversation in 2026.

There is never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, 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 – to some extent. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, should he consider a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister 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 past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political perils as the year progresses. His friendship 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 thought he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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