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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our interview went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never truly break for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant 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 resign, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year unfolds. 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 many years, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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