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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk next year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I aim to guide the party," 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 argue, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of 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 done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former 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 unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to