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"I'll be positioned in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite us into his official residence for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for those in the top job. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his standing are set to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting evident political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication 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 a long period, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Some demanded denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to