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"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if the discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever time off for those in the top job. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, 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 normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the saggy end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his political fate are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was naturally anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

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

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have faltered, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president acquires a new jeopardy after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

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

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

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to