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"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to improve. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, does he need a change of tack?

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

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.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" 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 – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk 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 comfortable with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been growing tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to