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"I will be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

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

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his standing are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

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

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want 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 walk away, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting evident political dangers as the year gets going. 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 ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably trigger accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

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