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"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the PM is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the poll", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the battle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would resign, should one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be very poor for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government enacted during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

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

Political Challenges

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with much more political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were well-known ones.

Given that he is in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, 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 advocate of international law" but we "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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