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"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, joking that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome us into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

There is never any time off for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

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

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

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