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"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if the discussion went well, he might invite us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.

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

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant 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 walk away, should one of his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He committed 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 certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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