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"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if the interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they believe his standing are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

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

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely 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 revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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