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

There is rarely ever downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently 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.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue 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 sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably impatient for things to change. He tried to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me 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 controversy when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to