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"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is never truly time off for those in the top job. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his 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 dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the leader is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our generation and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the electorate was naturally impatient for things to improve. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, does he need a change of tack?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM admitted 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 comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some demanded condemn it before we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been simmering desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's doing that, but his new more concrete plan to integrate further with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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