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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer declared, noting that if the interview was successful, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is never any break for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I plan to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

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

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central message is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing clear political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship 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 a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to