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"I will remain in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that numerous of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted 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 controversy when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy 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 this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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