"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another talk in the coming year.
For a PM, there's never any downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher precisely had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.
As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.
That certainly appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.
But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are set to turn around?
The harsh reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.
However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.
Multiple times he told me he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.
"We are in the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he declared.
The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.
Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.
Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.
He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.
The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.
His core argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".
The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.
However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.
When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, should he consider a new narrative?
No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as desired.
The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.
The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for 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 previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.
Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.
And he is courting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.
Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.
He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".
Opponents wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.
And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.
Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.
A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to
A tech journalist and software developer with over a decade of experience covering AI advancements and cybersecurity trends across Europe.
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