Several in the Labour Party Desire Keir Starmer Gone. He Informs Interviewers He'll Survive – while Britain's Economic Outlook Is Set to Improve.

"I'll be positioned in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, adding that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's rarely ever downtime for prime ministers. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members believe he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him in 2026.

But Starmer was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our times and I plan to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The issue for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to contend, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no circumstances under which he would walk away, even if a his MPs challenged him for the job, if those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He attempted to account for his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a specific date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt closer now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

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

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were repeated ones.

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

No administration, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, has everything its as planned.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because government is hard, but because he and his team have erred, even in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- 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 told me he was a "longtime champion of international law" but the public "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to condemn it prior to the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has always been simmering desire in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's doing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will probably elicit accusations that he is reneging on his pledge never to try to overturn the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to