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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will please many on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to