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"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, noting that if our discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for another chat next year.

There is never any downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time the discussion, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his standing are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

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

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

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

Promises of Improvement

He sought to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration implemented during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known 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 an extended period, gets everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" 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 – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been simmering tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM denies he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably trigger howls that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the results that followed Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to