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"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might invite us into his official residence for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to change. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me 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 following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing clear political perils as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed 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 told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been simmering desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to