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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The May Elections

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

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

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 outcry when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration 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 party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to