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"I will remain in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any break for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are about to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to change. He tried to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso 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 stated for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central argument is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

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

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer 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 facing obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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