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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge 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.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally eager for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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