Several within the Labour Party Seek Keir Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Assures Me He'll Remain – and Britain's Economy Will Strengthen.

"I will remain in the same office by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our interview was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into Number 10 for another talk next year.

There is rarely ever time off for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to understand what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his close political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the year commences, Starmer seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

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

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Starmer was having none of it when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", arguing nobody would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he declared.

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But even though he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to get better. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would strengthen despite rising unemployment, he argued, when strategies the administration enacted during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to ensure 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 spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, should he consider a new narrative?

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

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

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister 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 after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action prior to the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been growing desire in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to