A Number of in Labour Desire Keir Starmer Gone. The Prime Minister Assures Interviewers He'll Survive – and Britain's Economic Outlook Will Strengthen.
"I will be sitting in this seat by 2027," the Prime Minister declared, adding that if the conversation was successful, he might welcome us into Downing Street for a follow-up conversation in the coming year.
For a PM, there's never any time off for those in the top job. Shortly before the interview began, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and attempting to decipher exactly what had occurred in Venezuela, where his close friend, US President Donald Trump, had recently attacked and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Once our lengthy talk, which was far more extended than typical, had finished, Maduro had been charged in New York.
A Refresh for the New Year
With the year starts, the Prime Minister seems to have had a degree of a reboot. Maybe even just a little relaxation with the family at Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat.
That certainly seemed to have resulted in better spirits than at the difficult tail end of 2025, a terrible year politically for him.
But are he and his colleagues deluding themselves if they believe his fortunes are set to improve?
Internal Doubts
The uncomfortable truth for the prime minister is that many of his party members think he's underperforming at his job. Some of them would rather take a risk and remove him in 2026.
However Sir Keir was having none of it during our conversation on Saturday morning.
Multiple times he told me he'd be "evaluated at the next election", insisting no one would take his five-year mandate from him – even if the best chance of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace leader.
"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to lead us," he said.
The May Elections
The problem for the prime minister is that he will be assessed well ahead of then – in a major set of elections in May throughout the UK. He sought to argue, maybe excessively, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.
True – to some extent. But even though he may not want to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.
This did not stop Sir Keir stating that there were no situation under which he would resign, even if a his colleagues contested his leadership for the job, should those elections prove disastrous for Labour.
Promises of Improvement
He attempted to rationalise his low poll ratings by saying the electorate was reasonably eager for things to get better. He tried to convince the interviewer, and the nation, that 2026 would be a change.
The economy would improve notwithstanding rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government enacted during their initial rocky year began to bear fruit.
- He committed to shut asylum hotels before the current deadline of 2029, but he did not put a specific date on that.
- He added too, with the qualification that it wasn't a done deal, that a peace deal in Ukraine felt closer 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 ensure security for Ukraine – to guard a possible peace.
His central argument is that soon the country will "turn the corner".
Political Challenges
The prime minister may have communicated with more energy than I've seen from him for a while – calmer, maybe, with more time to talk.
But despite encountering pressure from many directions for a bolder approach, with increased political vision, more urgency, more speed and more urgency, his explanations were familiar ones.
When he finds himself in considerable political difficulty, does he need a different script?
No government, and especially not one that has been struggling in the polls for many months, has everything its own way.
Sir Keir's problems are not only because government is challenging, but because he and his colleagues have made mistakes, including in the last few weeks.
Controversies and Dangers
The PM admitted that he was sorry for saying he was "pleased" to welcome back 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 – came to light.
Sir Keir blamed "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a fancier way of saying not my fault.
And he is facing obvious political dangers as the year unfolds. His friendship 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 many years, the notion he would be content with such action seems far-fetched.
International Law and Brexit
He stated he was a "longtime champion of international law" but we "simply do not have the full picture at the moment".
Opponents wanted him to condemn it before the interview. And the government is expected to face more pressure to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.
And there has long been bubbling tension in the Labour party to revisit some of the consequences of Brexit.
Sir Keir denies he's heading in that direction, but his new more concrete commitment to align more closely with the EU's single market – the giant economic European market – will likely elicit protests that he is going back on his pledge never to try to reverse the choices that stemmed from Brexit.
A commitment to align with more of the single market will satisfy some on his own side, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to
