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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "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 risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to