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"I'll be positioned in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his party members think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our times and I plan to guide the party," he said.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though 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 scenario under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally eager for things to improve. He tried to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government implemented during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is inviting clear political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to