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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge 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 step down, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy 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 thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to