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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the interview was successful, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they believe his standing are about to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted 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 controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

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

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been bubbling desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the decisions that followed Brexit.

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