A Number of within Labour Seek Starmer Removed. He Informs Me He Will Survive – while Britain's Economy Is Set to Get Better.

"I'll be positioned in this seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the interview went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for another talk in 2026.

For a PM, there's never any break for leaders. Just an hour before we sat down, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and trying to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

As the new year begins, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly appeared to have put him in improved morale than at the saggy tail end of 2025, a terrible political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his political fate are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly truth for the PM is that many of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and get him out in 2026.

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

Multiple times he told me he'd be "judged at the general election", maintaining no one would take his term from him – despite the fact that the most effective strategy of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

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

The May Elections

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be scrutinised long before then – in a mega set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to protest, maybe too much, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – to some extent. But although he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would resign, should a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, if those elections be disastrous for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was understandably impatient for things to change. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the public, that this year would be distinct.

The economic situation would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he argued, when policies the administration put in place during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He pledged to close asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now talking about how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His central message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have spoken with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his points were familiar ones.

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

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because governing is challenging, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The prime minister expressed regret that he was sorry for saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when past remarks he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Starmer attributed it to "the process" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.

And he is inviting obvious political risks as the year progresses. His alliance 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 was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be content with these events seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "lifelong champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the complete details at the moment".

Some wanted him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

And there has long been bubbling desire in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will likely provoke accusations that he is going back on his vow never to try to undo the decisions that followed Brexit.

A move to align with more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to