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"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been growing tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to