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"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into his official residence for another talk in the coming year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and remove him this year.

But Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would remove his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he said.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, 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 be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were well-known ones.

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

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

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