"I'll remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer remarked, joking that if our discussion went well, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk next year.
There is rarely ever time off for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.
With the year starts, Starmer seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.
This seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.
But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they believe his fortunes are about to turn around?
The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that a significant number of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. A faction of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.
But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.
Repeatedly he told me he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting nobody would take his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.
"This is the struggle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.
The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.
Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.
Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.
He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably eager for things to change. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be distinct.
The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he said, when strategies the government implemented during their first turbulent year began to take effect.
His central message is that this year the country will "turn the corner".
The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.
However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.
Given that he is in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a different script?
No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as desired.
Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.
The prime minister expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.
Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.
And he is inviting obvious political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.
Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be at ease with these events seems far-fetched.
He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".
Critics wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.
There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.
The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.
A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to
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