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"I will remain in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the conversation went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his standing are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

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

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its as desired.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship 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 ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded condemn it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

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