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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left 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 kidding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that numerous of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting no one would take his electoral 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.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to change. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government put in place during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time 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 offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His core argument is that this year the country will "turn the corner".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, 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 government is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

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