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"I will remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. Shortly before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his allies being unrealistic if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, does he need a new narrative?

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

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

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 controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" 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 evident political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication 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 his career, the idea he would be content with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to