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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if the interview was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge 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 a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to improve. He tried to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added 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 full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

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

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a different script?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me 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 comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 notion he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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