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"I will be sitting in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

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

Yet, are he and his allies being unrealistic if they think his standing are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the leader is that numerous of his colleagues believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I intend to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He said 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 major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political peril, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister 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 made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some called for him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to