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"I'll be positioned in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if our discussion went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

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

But Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to improve. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

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

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, does he need a new narrative?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires 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 his career, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been simmering desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to