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"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his fortunes are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably eager for things to improve. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

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

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were repeated ones.

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

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to