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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, joking that if the interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they believe his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I intend to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. 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 stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

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

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

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

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

No government, 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 just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk 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 notion he would be at ease with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

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