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"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

There is never truly downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out 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 poll", insisting nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably eager for things to improve. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core point is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering pressure in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to