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"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing no one would take his term from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I intend to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to get better. He tried to assure me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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 only because government is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to