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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if our interview was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another chat next year.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would remove his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought 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 – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to change. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "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 close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be at ease with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just lack the entire story at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably trigger protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to