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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in 2026.

There is never any break for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new 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 revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

No administration, 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 only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to