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"I will remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally impatient for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, does he need a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been growing tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to