A Number of in Labour Desire Keir Starmer Out. The Prime Minister Assures Me He'll Survive – and Britain's Economy Will Improve.

"I'll be sitting in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our discussion went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

There is never truly downtime for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to get better?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the leader is that many of his colleagues think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the general election", insisting no one would take his five-year mandate from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the struggle of our generation and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with much more political direction, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is facing clear political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with such action seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to