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"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.

But Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

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

No government, 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 only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

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

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

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A move 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