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"I will remain in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, noting that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out this year.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his electoral 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 leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant 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, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with greater political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister 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 comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been growing pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to