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"I will remain in this office by 2027," Starmer remarked, noting that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for another talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues believe he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the fight of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about 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 implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economic situation would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a more decisive approach, with much more political direction, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even 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 following an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is inviting obvious political dangers as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long champion 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 more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been growing tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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