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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I plan to lead us," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president takes on 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 his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to