Some within the Labour Party Seek Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Assures Interviewers He'll Survive – while the Economy Is Set to Improve.

"I'll remain in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, noting that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never any break for prime ministers. Just an hour before we sat down, Starmer had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big ally, US President Donald Trump, had recently targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than normal, had concluded, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

But as the new year begins, Starmer seems to have had a kind of a reboot. Perhaps even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in better spirits than at the sluggish conclusion of 2025, a awful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they reckon his political fate are poised to turn around?

Party Concerns

The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that many of his colleagues think he's ineffective at his job. Several of them would sooner take a risk and remove him in 2026.

However Starmer was dismissing such talk during our conversation on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would remove his five-year mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace its leader.

"This is the fight of our lifetime and I aim to guide the party," he affirmed.

The May Elections

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged far sooner than then – in a mega set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to contend, perhaps too much, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – in part. But although 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 scenario under which he would walk away, even if a his colleagues ran against him for the job, if those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was understandably anxious for things to change. He sought to assure me, and the public, that 2026 would be different.

The economy would recover notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when plans the government put in place during their initial choppy year began to show results.

• He committed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western allies were now considering how to combine US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to safeguard a possible peace.

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

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with increased political direction, more dynamism, more speed and more urgency, his arguments were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a different script?

No administration, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for an extended period, has everything its as desired.

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

Regrets and Risks

The PM admitted that he regretted saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK following an controversy when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – resurfaced.

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

And he is courting obvious political risks as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president entails a new complication after Trump's strikes on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over many years, the idea he would be at ease with this kind of intervention seems unlikely.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "career-long champion of international law" but the public "just do not have the complete details at the moment".

Opponents called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is expected to face further scrutiny to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

And there has always been simmering tension in the Labour ranks to undo or remake some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific plan to integrate further with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European trading zone – will likely elicit protests that he is reneging on his vow never to try to overturn the decisions 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