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"I'll remain in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the discussion went well, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up chat next year.

There is never any downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated 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 point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM 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 backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting evident political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to