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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The May Elections

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 attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir 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 dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship 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 was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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