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"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are poised to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would remove his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

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

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the results that flowed from Brexit.

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