Some within Labour Want Starmer Out. He Tells Me He Will Endure – and Britain's Economy Is Set to Strengthen.

"I will be positioned in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if the discussion was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk next year.

For a PM, there's never any break for those in the top job. Just an hour before the interview began, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a revitalisation. Maybe even just some downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This seemed to have left him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his standing are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the leader is that a significant number of his colleagues believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I intend to lead us," he said.

The May Elections

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to concede it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir suggesting that there were no circumstances under which he would step down, even if a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections prove catastrophic for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally eager for things to improve. He sought to persuade the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would recover despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the administration put in place during their initial turbulent year began to take effect.

• He pledged to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility 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 offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His big point is that this year the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were familiar ones.

Given that he is in considerable political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

Sir Keir blamed "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing clear political perils as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's intervention 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 idea he would be at ease with such action seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but the public "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics demanded criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also long been bubbling pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific plan to move closer with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the choices that stemmed from Brexit.

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