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"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to admit 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 resign, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me 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 previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to