Several within the Labour Party Desire Keir Starmer Out. He Tells Interviewers He'll Remain – while the Economy Is Set to Improve.

"I'll be positioned in the same position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might invite us into Downing Street for a follow-up talk next year.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to decipher what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was much longer than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little downtime with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have resulted in improved morale than at the saggy conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his standing are about to get better?

Internal Doubts

The grisly truth for the prime minister is that a significant number of his fellow MPs think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he stated he'd be "assessed at the general election", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the most effective strategy of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 may be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to lead us," he declared.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps excessively, 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 be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should one of his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He attempted to account for his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was understandably impatient for things to get better. He aimed to assure the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the government enacted during their first rocky year began to take effect.

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a specific date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to combine US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with greater vigour than observed from him for a some time – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite facing demands from within his own party for a bolder approach, with increased political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, does he need a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

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

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when comments he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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 inviting clear political dangers as the year gets going. His friendship with the US president acquires a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the idea he would be content with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He told me he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics called for him to denounce it before we spoke. And the administration is likely to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the results of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to integrate further with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his promise never to try to undo the results that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will delight many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to