Several within Labour Seek Starmer Gone. He Tells Interviewers He Will Remain – while the Economic Outlook Is Set to Strengthen.

"I will be sitting in this office by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer remarked, joking that if the interview went well, he might welcome the interviewer into his official residence for another chat in 2026.

There is rarely ever time off for prime ministers. In the hour before our chat started, Starmer had been in calls with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to understand what on earth had happened in Venezuela, where his big political chum, US President Donald Trump, had recently launched a strike against and detained its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was much longer than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Starmer appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Maybe even just some relaxation with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they think his fortunes are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his fellow MPs think he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner take a risk and oust him sooner rather than later.

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

Repeatedly he insisted he'd be "judged at the next election", maintaining nobody would strip his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 could be for Labour to replace leader.

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

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to contend, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs local authorities, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

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

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

Predicting a Turnaround

He tried to account for his unpopularity by saying the voters was naturally eager for things to get better. He tried to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

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

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels before the current target date of 2029, but he wouldn't put a specific date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it was not a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western allies were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big argument is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

A Consistent Script

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

However, in spite of facing demands from many directions for a more decisive approach, with greater political direction, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his explanations were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political peril, should he consider a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his team have made mistakes, including in the recent past.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister admitted that he regretted saying he was "happy" to welcome back the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an outcry when past remarks he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

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

And he is courting evident political dangers as the year unfolds. His close relationship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over a long period, the notion he would be comfortable with these events seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He stated he was a "longtime proponent of international law" but we "just lack the complete details at the moment".

Critics 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 coming days.

And there has long been growing desire in the Labour ranks to revisit some of the outcomes of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to align more closely with the European trading bloc – the giant economic European trading zone – will probably elicit howls that he is breaking his promise never to try to reverse the choices that flowed from Brexit.

A commitment to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to