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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if the discussion went well, he might invite us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they believe his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government put in place during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification 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 revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

And he is courting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication 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 idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to