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"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to 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 suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, should he consider a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me 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 statements he'd made in the past – 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 fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Critics wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to