Several in the Labour Party Seek Keir Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Assures Interviewers He Will Remain – while Britain's Economic Outlook Will Improve.

"I will be sitting in the same office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is never any time off for prime ministers. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to turn around?

Internal Doubts

The grisly reality for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

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

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the general election", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 may be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I intend to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to 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 stating that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably eager for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the nation, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political vision, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political difficulty, does he need a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM expressed regret that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing obvious political perils as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

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

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit howls that he is going back on his promise never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will please a faction on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to