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"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk next year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

However Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to