Some within Labour Want Starmer Gone. He Tells Interviewers He'll Remain – and the Economy Is Set to Get Better.

"I'll be sitting in this seat by 2027," Starmer stated, adding that if our conversation went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. Shortly before our chat started, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year commences, Sir Keir seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to turn around?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and get him out this year.

But Starmer was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", insisting nobody would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the struggle of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The problem for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to argue, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – 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 implying that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, if those elections be catastrophic for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He tried to explain his low poll ratings by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to persuade me, and the public, that the coming months would be a change.

The economic situation would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he argued, when plans the government enacted during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of encountering demands from various quarters for a bolder approach, with much more political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political trouble, does he need a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's problems are not only because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an backlash when comments he'd previously made – such as 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 fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication 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 thought he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM disputes he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit protests that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to cosy up to more of the single market will please many on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to