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"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably eager for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration put in place during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been growing tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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