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"I'll be sitting in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if our interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever break for those in the top job. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to get better?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and get him out sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may not want 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 step down, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his unpopularity by saying the electorate was reasonably anxious for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that this year would be a change.

The economic situation would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

Given that he is in this much political trouble, should he consider a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" 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.

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

And he is courting obvious political perils as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the entire story at the moment".

Some demanded criticise the action prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour party to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the choices 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