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"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Downing Street for another talk in the coming year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to improve. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed 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 core argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

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

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to