Some within the Labour Party Want Keir Starmer Removed. The Prime Minister Tells Interviewers He'll Survive – while the Economic Outlook Is Set to Get Better.

"I will be positioned in this office by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, joking that if our conversation went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

There is never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our interview, which was far more extended than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the new year begins, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a refresh. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a dreadful year politically for him.

But are he and his supporters kidding themselves if they reckon his political fate are set to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his fellow MPs are convinced he's ineffective at his job. A faction of them would rather gamble and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was rejecting the idea in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "judged at the poll", insisting no one would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 may be for Labour to replace leader.

"This is the fight of our generation and I aim to lead us," he affirmed.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

True – 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 stating that there were no situation under which he would step down, should one of his colleagues ran against him for the job, should those elections prove very poor for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to explain his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economy would recover in the face of rising unemployment, he said, when policies the administration enacted during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He said too, with the proviso that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

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

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a some time – less tense, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

However, in spite of facing demands from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with increased political clarity, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his arguments were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, does he need a new narrative?

No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its as planned.

The Prime Minister's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his team have faltered, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Starmer blamed "procedures" for failing to identify what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the thought he would be at ease with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".

Opponents called for him to denounce it prior to we spoke. And the administration is expected to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has consistently been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the results of Brexit.

Sir Keir disputes he's pursuing that, but his new firmer pledge to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely provoke howls that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will please some on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to