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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing no one would remove his term from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

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 made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting clear political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to