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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if the discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in the coming year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that many of his party members think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration put in place during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, does he need a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing evident political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

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

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling 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 firmer commitment to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to