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"I'll be sitting in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, noting that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

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

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

But are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his standing are poised to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

"This is the battle of our generation and I plan to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government enacted during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central argument is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

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

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is inviting evident political dangers as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new jeopardy 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 a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will likely provoke protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

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