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"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and get him out in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

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

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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 inviting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to