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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," Starmer stated, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing nobody would remove his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to change. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, 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 as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted 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 controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" 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 risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but the public "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to