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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never any time off for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out in 2026.

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

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, 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 admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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