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"I will remain in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to