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"I'll remain in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if the conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I aim to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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 courting evident political dangers as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

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

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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