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"I will remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another conversation next year.

There is never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I plan to be at the forefront," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments 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 situation under which he would step down, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Opponents wanted him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to