A Number of in the Labour Party Desire Keir Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Informs Me He'll Endure – and Britain's Economy Is Set to Strengthen.

"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, noting that if our interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up chat in the coming year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was much longer than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a degree of a refresh. Maybe even just some a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the sluggish end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering 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 issue for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would step down, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably eager for things to get better. He sought to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

Political Challenges

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder strategy, with greater political vision, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Starmer blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting evident political risks as the year gets going. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be comfortable with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will likely trigger protests that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy many on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to