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"I'll remain in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally eager for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

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 just because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. 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 opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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