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"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our conversation was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had something of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and get him out in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the fight of our times and I aim to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when plans the administration put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core point is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication 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 many years, the thought 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 "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to