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"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I plan to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to improve. He tried to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" 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 dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely trigger howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to