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"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to improve. He tried to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to