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"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. Shortly before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across 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.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove very poor 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 sought to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He committed 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 certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed 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 big message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including 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 following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to