Several within the Labour Party Desire Starmer Out. The Prime Minister Informs Me He'll Remain – and the Economic Outlook Will Get Better.

"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for those in the top job. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a reboot. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that numerous of his fellow MPs believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and get him out this year.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to change. He aimed to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification 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 stated for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core message is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite encountering demands from many directions for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

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

No administration, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as desired.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is facing evident political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president takes on a new jeopardy after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong advocate of international law" but the public "just lack the full picture at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before we spoke. And the government is likely to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also long been bubbling tension in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

The PM disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the vast economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to