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"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is rarely ever break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime 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 sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government put in place during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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