A Number of within Labour Desire Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Tells Interviewers He'll Remain – while Britain's Economic Outlook Is Set to Strengthen.

"I will be sitting in this position by 2027," Starmer declared, joking that if our conversation went well, he might invite us into Number 10 for a follow-up talk next year.

There is rarely ever break for prime ministers. Shortly before our chat started, Starmer had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had occurred in Venezuela, where his close ally, US President Donald Trump, had just launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was considerably lengthier than usual, had finished, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

A Reboot for the New Year

But as the year starts, the Prime Minister appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

That certainly seemed to have put him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his allies deluding themselves if they think his standing are set to get better?

Internal Doubts

The uncomfortable reality for the leader is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him this year.

However Starmer was having none of it in the interview on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "assessed at the next election", arguing nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – even if the optimal path of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change leader.

"This is the struggle of our times and I aim to lead us," he said.

The Spring Test

The challenge for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He sought to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

True – up to a point. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He aimed to persuade the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when plans the administration implemented during their first choppy year began to take effect.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace agreement in Ukraine felt more likely now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He disclosed for the first occasion that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to safeguard a potential peace.

His central point is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering calls from various quarters for a bolder strategy, with much more political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were repeated ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

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

Sir Keir's challenges are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have erred, including in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

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

Sir Keir blamed "the system" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is facing evident political risks as the year progresses. His close relationship with the US president takes on a new risk after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the idea he would be comfortable with this kind of intervention seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the complete details at the moment".

Critics demanded condemn it prior to the interview. And the administration is expected to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the next few days.

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

Sir Keir disputes he's heading in that direction, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European trading zone – will probably elicit accusations that he is breaking his promise never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A move to integrate into more of the single market will please some on his side of the party, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to