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"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally impatient for things to get better. He tried to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

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

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably trigger accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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