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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if our interview went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for another talk in 2026.

There is rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had occurred 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 far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the year commences, Starmer appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just some a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the prime minister 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.

But Starmer was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He tried to persuade me, and the nation, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but 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 revealed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an outcry when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has consistently been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his side of the party, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to