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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

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

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action 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 such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

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