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

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his standing are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to improve. He tried to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to