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"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if the conversation went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

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

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the fight 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 well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer 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 safeguard a potential peace.

His central point is that this year 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 – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, does he need a different script?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM 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 after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action 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 always been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably trigger accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will delight a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to