A Number of in the Labour Party Want Keir Starmer Out. He Assures Me He Will Endure – and Britain's Economy Will Improve.

"I'll be positioned in this position by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if our conversation went well, he might invite the interviewer into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for leaders. Just an hour before our chat started, the PM had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to work out exactly what had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once the discussion, which was much longer than typical, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

A Refresh for the New Year

With the year commences, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Perhaps even just a little a rest with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence.

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

Yet, are he and his allies kidding themselves if they reckon his standing are set to improve?

Leadership Questions

The uncomfortable reality for the PM is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. A faction of them would rather take a risk and oust him this year.

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

On several occasions he insisted he'd be "assessed at the poll", insisting nobody would remove his electoral mandate from him – even if the best chance of stopping Nigel Farage and Reform UK entering No 10 could be for Labour to change leader.

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

The Spring Test

The challenge for the prime minister is that he will be judged well ahead of then – in a huge set of elections in May throughout the UK. He attempted to protest, maybe too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not about Westminster.

Accurate – to some extent. But although he may be reluctant to acknowledge it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

This did not stop Sir Keir implying that there were no situation under which he would walk away, even if one of his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.

Promises of Improvement

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the voters was reasonably impatient for things to improve. He aimed to assure me, and the nation, that 2026 would be different.

The economic situation would improve despite rising unemployment, he claimed, when policies the administration implemented during their first turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He vowed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current target date of 2029, but he did not set a firm date on that.
• He added too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first time that Western partners were now talking about how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to protect a potential peace.

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

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – more relaxed, maybe, with more time to talk.

But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political direction, more vigour, more pace and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

Given that he is in such significant political peril, does he need a change of tack?

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

The Prime Minister's challenges are not just because governing is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

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

Starmer blamed "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 friendship with the US president takes on a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who opposed the war in Iraq, over his career, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

International Law and Brexit

He stated he was a "career-long advocate of international law" but we "simply lack the full picture at the moment".

Some wanted him to criticise the action before the interview. And the government is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the near future.

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

The PM rejects he's pursuing that, but his new specific commitment to integrate further with the single market – the vast economic European market – will probably provoke protests that he is going back on his vow never to try to reverse the results that followed Brexit.

A commitment to cosy up to more of the single market will delight some on his backbenches, but it is simple material for Reform and the Conservatives to