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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I plan to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The May Elections

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 contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to assure me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat 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 disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action 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 content with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Critics demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to