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"I'll remain in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what 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 finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and get him out in 2026.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I plan to lead us," he declared.

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

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

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration put in place during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible 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 I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need 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 team have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret 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 controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting clear political perils as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

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