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"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the interview went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues believe he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would step down, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to improve. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

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

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks 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 facing clear political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable 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 do not have the full picture at the moment".

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

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to