"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation next year.
For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Once our interview, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.
With the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.
This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.
Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his fortunes are set to turn around?
The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him in 2026.
However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.
On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.
"This is the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.
The problem for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.
Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.
Despite this, Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.
He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be different.
The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their initial turbulent year began to show results.
His central message is that in 2026 the country will "reach a turning point".
The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.
But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.
When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?
No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its own way.
Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.
The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of 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 system" 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 perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.
Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.
He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".
Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.
There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.
The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely provoke accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.
A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to
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