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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for another chat in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

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 concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economy would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration implemented during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His central point is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is inviting evident political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed 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 this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to