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"I will remain in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly break for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his standing are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's not very good 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.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime 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 local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable 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 challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

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

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "just haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to