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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, noting that if the interview was successful, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

There is never truly break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I plan to lead us," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, 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 be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably eager for things to improve. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His core message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, should he consider a new narrative?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for 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 made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been simmering desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to