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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me 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 past remarks he'd previously made – 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 risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to