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"I'll remain in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

There is never truly break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the prime minister is that many of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and oust him this year.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", arguing nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps 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 even though he may be reluctant 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 step down, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to