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"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to improve. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted 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 comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting obvious political perils as the year gets going. His alliance 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 former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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