Several within Labour Seek Keir Starmer Out. The Prime Minister Tells Me He'll Endure – while Britain's Economic Outlook Is Set to Improve.

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

There is never any break for leaders. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have resulted in a more positive mood than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are poised to turn around?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Starmer was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our times and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

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

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to take effect.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – more relaxed, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with greater political direction, more dynamism, more pace and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have faltered, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when past remarks he'd made in the past – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political risks as the year unfolds. His friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with such action seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long proponent of international law" but we "just haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably provoke howls that he is breaking his promise never to try to overturn the decisions that followed Brexit.

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