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"I'll be positioned in the same office by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before we sat down, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a bit of relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would resign, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to get better. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken 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 pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – 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 dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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