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"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if the conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to get better. He aimed to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

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

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to