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"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners 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 in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

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