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"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for those in the top job. Shortly before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying 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.

By the time the discussion, which was much longer than usual, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and get him out in 2026.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably anxious for things to change. He aimed to assure me, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret 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 after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is inviting clear political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- 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 unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will probably provoke accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to