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"I will remain in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if the interview was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the prime minister 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.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, 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 admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will please some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to