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"I'll remain in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle 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 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 local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, does he need 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.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" 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 perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to