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"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out this year.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would take his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action 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 this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to