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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any break for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

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

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration put in place during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, does he need a different script?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting evident 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 was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to