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"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, joking that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him in 2026.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would take his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, does he need a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been growing desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to