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"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major 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 governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's military action 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 these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to