A Number of in Labour Want Keir Starmer Removed. The Prime Minister Assures Interviewers He'll Survive – while Britain's Economic Outlook Is Set to Strengthen.

"I'll be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, adding that if the interview went well, he might invite the interviewer into Number 10 for a follow-up talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they think his political fate are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh truth for the PM is that many of his fellow MPs believe he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the next election", insisting nobody would remove his term from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to switch its leader.

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

The May Elections

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to concede it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to get better. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their first rocky year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His central point is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a some time – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing pressure from within his own party for a bolder approach, with greater political vision, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were well-known ones.

Given that he is in considerable political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

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

Starmer blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

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

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents demanded denounce it prior to we spoke. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

And there has always been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the results of Brexit.

The PM denies he's pursuing that, but his new firmer plan to move closer with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is breaking his vow never to try to overturn 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 simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to