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"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He sought to convince me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar 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 as planned.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with these events 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".

Some called for him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to