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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat next year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just some downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

But Sir Keir was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political risks as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to