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"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – 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 implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, does he need a new narrative?

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 only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that followed Brexit.

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