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"I will be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another chat next year.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just some relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant 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 a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk 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 at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to