"I will be positioned in the same office by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, joking that if our discussion proceeded smoothly, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.
For a PM, there's never truly downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
When our interview, which was much longer than normal, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.
But as the year commences, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.
That certainly appeared to have left him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.
Yet, are he and his supporters being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to improve?
The uncomfortable truth for the PM is that many of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.
However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.
Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", insisting nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to switch its leader.
"This is the struggle of our generation and I plan to be at the forefront," he affirmed.
The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.
True – up to a point. But even though he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.
This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues challenged him for the job, should those elections be disastrous for Labour.
He sought to explain his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably anxious for things to change. He tried to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.
The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to show results.
His central point is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".
The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.
However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political direction, more vigour, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.
Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?
No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as planned.
Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.
The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.
Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.
And he is inviting evident political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president acquires 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 many years, the notion he would be content with these events seems unlikely.
He told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply lack the complete details at the moment".
Critics demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.
There has also always been bubbling tension in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.
The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new more concrete pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the results that flowed from Brexit.
A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to
Astrophysicist and space technology consultant with 15 years of experience in lunar mission planning and research.
