A Number of within Labour Want Starmer Removed. The Prime Minister Informs Me He Will Endure – and the Economy Is Set to Get Better.

"I will be positioned in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister stated, adding that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for another conversation in 2026.

There is rarely ever break for leaders. In the hour before our chat started, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to work out precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his key ally, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had something of a refresh. Maybe even just a little downtime with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

That certainly seemed to have put him in better spirits than at the difficult end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

But are he and his colleagues being unrealistic if they believe his fortunes are about to improve?

Leadership Questions

The harsh reality for the PM is that a significant number of his colleagues are convinced he's underperforming 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.

Repeatedly he told me he'd be "judged at the poll", maintaining no one would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to change its leader.

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

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a major set of elections in May across the UK. He attempted to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs local authorities, and who runs the governments in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

True – in part. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no situation under which he would walk away, should a his MPs ran against him for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to change. He aimed to convince me, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

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

• He vowed to shut asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a new date on that.
• He said 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 full-scale invasion.
• He revealed for the first occasion that Western allies were now considering how to integrate US and European forces to provide security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.

His big message is that soon the country will "reach a turning point".

A Consistent Script

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing pressure from many directions for a more decisive approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more pace and more urgency, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in such significant political difficulty, is a different approach required a different script?

No administration, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, even in the last few weeks.

Regrets and Risks

The prime minister told me that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an backlash when comments he'd made in the past – 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 inviting evident political perils as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's intervention on Venezuela.

Having interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, a ex- human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over his career, the notion he would be content with these events seems far-fetched.

International Law and Brexit

He asserted he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply haven't got the full picture at the moment".

Some called for him to denounce it before the interview. And the administration is expected to face further scrutiny to give an clear view in Parliament in the coming days.

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

The PM denies he's doing that, but his new more concrete commitment to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to overturn the results that stemmed from Brexit.

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