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"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

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

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

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 controversy when past remarks 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 it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy 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 at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight many on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to