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"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the PM is that a significant number of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to improve. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, 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, gets everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes 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 idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to