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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never truly break for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

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

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, does he need a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM 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 statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been simmering tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

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