Some within the Labour Party Desire Keir Starmer Gone. He Informs Interviewers He Will Endure – while the Economy Will Strengthen.

"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.

There is never truly break for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

A Reboot for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a bit of downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

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

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they think his political fate are poised to improve?

Leadership Questions

The grisly reality for the PM is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's not very good at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him this year.

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

On several occasions he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", arguing no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

"We are in the fight of our generation and I intend to guide the party," he affirmed.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to contend, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no scenario under which he would resign, even if one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to change. He tried to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would improve despite rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration implemented during their initial turbulent year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he wouldn't set a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

His central message is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with more energy than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in this much political difficulty, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

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

And he is courting clear political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former 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 told me he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to criticise the action before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

Sir Keir rejects he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to integrate further with the single market – the giant economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to undo the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight a faction on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to