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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if the conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the battle of our times and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, 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.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to change. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His core point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication 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 many years, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to