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"I will remain in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

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

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally eager for things to get better. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as planned.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – such as 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 clear political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

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

Some called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

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