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"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, joking that if the discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his fortunes are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting no one would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, 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 – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government implemented during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, 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 allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a more decisive strategy, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, should he consider a different script?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister 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 statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably provoke accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to