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"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer 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 integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

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

Some called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also consistently been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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