A Number of within Labour Seek Starmer Out. The Prime Minister Informs Interviewers He'll Survive – and the Economy Is Set to Strengthen.

"I'll remain in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, joking that if the interview proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into Number 10 for another chat in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. In the hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his key political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

When our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than typical, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

As the new year begins, Sir Keir appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a bit of a rest with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

That certainly seemed to have left him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a terrible annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his political fate are poised to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh reality for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and oust him in 2026.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", maintaining no one would strip his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"We are in the battle of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be assessed long before then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He tried to contend, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

Promises of Improvement

He attempted to explain his unpopularity by saying the voters was reasonably anxious for things to improve. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial choppy year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a done deal, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He stated for the first occasion that Western allies were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His core message 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 a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with much more political clarity, more urgency, more pace and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, should he consider a new narrative?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because governing is hard, but because he and his team have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "delighted" to welcome back 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 – resurfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the system" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year gets going. His alliance with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long champion of international law" but we "just haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been growing pressure in the Labour party to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the EU's single market – the vast economic European market – will likely trigger accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to align with more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to