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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in 2026.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his standing are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

No administration, 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 made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to