Some in Labour Want Keir Starmer Gone. He Assures Interviewers He Will Survive – while the Economic Outlook Is Set to Improve.

"I will be positioned in the same position by 2027," Starmer remarked, adding that if our conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up chat in 2026.

There is never truly time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they reckon his political fate are set to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing no one would strip his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I plan to lead us," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the government put in place during their initial rocky year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the proviso that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political trouble, does he need a different script?

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

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

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