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"I'll be sitting in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than normal, had ended, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are set to improve?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

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

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the poll", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally anxious for things to get better. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big argument is that soon 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 more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political direction, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its own way.

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

Controversies and Dangers

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's strikes 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 content with such action seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering tension in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that followed Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to