Several in Labour Desire Starmer Gone. He Assures Me He Will Endure – and Britain's Economic Outlook Is Set to Strengthen.

"I'll be positioned in the same seat by 2027," the Prime Minister remarked, noting that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up chat next year.

For a PM, there's never truly downtime for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher what on earth had transpired in Venezuela, where his key friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our interview, which was far more extended than typical, had ended, Maduro had been indicted in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

With the year starts, Sir Keir appears to have had a kind of a refresh. Perhaps even just a bit of a rest with loved ones at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This seemed to have resulted in improved morale than at the sluggish end of 2025, a dreadful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his supporters deluding themselves if they reckon his fortunes are about to improve?

Party Concerns

The harsh truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members believe he's not very good at his job. Some of them would sooner gamble and oust him this year.

However Sir Keir was dismissing such talk when we spoke on Saturday morning.

On several occasions he told me he'd be "evaluated at the general election", maintaining nobody would take his electoral mandate from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of preventing Nigel Farage and Reform UK getting to No 10 might be for Labour to switch leader.

"We are in the battle of our generation and I aim to guide the party," he said.

The Spring Test

The issue for the PM is that he will be assessed far sooner than then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to protest, perhaps excessively, that they are about who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and not a verdict on Westminster.

Accurate – up to a point. But although he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be held accountable by those elections too.

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

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was reasonably impatient for things to change. He sought to convince the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be different.

The economy would improve in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their initial turbulent year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, although he did not put a firm date on that.
• He noted too, with the caveat that it was not a certainty, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer now than at any point since Russia's major invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to coordinate US and European forces to ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that in 2026 the country will "see an improvement".

Political Challenges

The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than observed from him for a while – less tense, perhaps, with a longer slot to talk.

But despite facing calls from within his own party for a bolder strategy, with greater political clarity, more vigour, more speed and more immediacy, his points were familiar ones.

When he finds himself in this much political peril, should he consider a different script?

No government, and certainly not one that has been struggling in the polls for an extended period, gets everything its own way.

The Prime Minister's problems are not only because government is difficult, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the last few weeks.

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 backlash when statements he'd previously made – such as calls for Zionists and police to be killed – surfaced.

Sir Keir attributed it to "the process" for not realising what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying it wasn't his responsibility.

And he is courting clear political perils as the year unfolds. His alliance with the US president acquires a new complication after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

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

International Law and Brexit

He told me he was a "longtime advocate of international law" but we "simply haven't got the entire story at the moment".

Critics called for him to criticise the action before the interview. And the administration is likely to face more pressure to give an definitive view in Parliament in the coming days.

There has also always been growing pressure in the Labour party to undo or remake some of the consequences of Brexit.

Sir Keir denies he's pursuing that, but his new specific pledge to move closer with the European trading bloc – the huge economic European market – will likely elicit accusations that he is breaking his vow never to try to reverse the decisions that stemmed from Brexit.

A decision to integrate into more of the single market will satisfy many on his own side, but it is easy fodder for Reform and the Conservatives to