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"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever time off for leaders. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his standing are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable 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 remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I plan to be at the forefront," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to improve. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to