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"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly break for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer 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 integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" 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 acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded denounce it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to