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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk next year.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Opponents called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been simmering pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to