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"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Number 10 for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about 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 acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government put in place during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core point is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from many directions for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic 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 ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

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

Some wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to