Some in the Labour Party Seek Keir Starmer Gone. He Tells Interviewers He'll Survive – and the Economy Will Improve.

"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer declared, adding that if the conversation went well, he might welcome us into his official residence for a follow-up talk in the coming year.

For a PM, there's never truly time off for leaders. In the hour before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to understand exactly what had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

By the time our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had finished, Maduro had been formally accused in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

As the year starts, Starmer appears to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just some downtime with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

This appeared to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a dreadful annus horribilis for him.

But are he and his allies kidding themselves if they think his fortunes are poised to get better?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues think he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather take a risk and remove him sooner rather than later.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk in the interview on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he stated he'd be "judged at the next election", arguing nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change its leader.

"We are in the struggle of our times and I intend to be at the forefront," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The issue for the PM is that he will be scrutinised far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, maybe excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But even though he may not want to acknowledge it, No 10 will be evaluated by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He tried to account for his low poll ratings by saying the public was understandably anxious for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that 2026 would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen notwithstanding rising unemployment, he said, when policies the government put in place during their first turbulent year began to take effect.

• He vowed to close asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, although he did not put a new date on that.
• He added too, with the qualification that it was not a foregone conclusion, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to protect a possible peace.

His core message is that in 2026 the country will "turn the corner".

Political Challenges

The PM may have spoken with greater vigour than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from within his own party for a more decisive strategy, with greater political clarity, more urgency, more speed and more immediacy, his points were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and certainly not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's problems are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not catching 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 complication after Trump's strikes 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 comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Opponents wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the next few days.

There has also consistently been simmering pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the outcomes of Brexit.

Sir Keir rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to align more closely with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his vow never to try to undo the choices that followed Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to