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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

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

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting clear political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship 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 was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to