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"I'll remain in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the discussion went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

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

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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