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"I will remain in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if our interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would strip his term from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing calls from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, 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 planned.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn 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 growing pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will delight a faction on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to