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"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if the interview was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to change. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret 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 outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

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

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to