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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his political fate are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I intend to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. 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 implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering 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".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

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 problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

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

Opponents called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to