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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever 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 working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

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

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

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally impatient for things to improve. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to