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"I will remain in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if our conversation was successful, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any downtime for those in the top job. Just an hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out precisely had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are about to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's not very good at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I aim to be at the forefront," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – to some extent. But even though he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would resign, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economy would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration implemented during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with renewed vitality than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer 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 facing evident political dangers as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be comfortable with such action seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to