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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

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

Party Concerns

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

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

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would strip 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 its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely 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 ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me 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 outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to