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"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our discussion was successful, he might invite us into his official residence for another chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the saggy end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his allies deluding themselves if they believe his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his party members think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer blamed "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to