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"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

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

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge 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 sought to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to get better. He tried to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of 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 – came to light.

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

And he is facing clear political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing 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 breaking his pledge never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to