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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer declared, adding that if our interview was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to improve?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

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

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me 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 outcry when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action 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 at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to