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"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, 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 time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting clear political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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