LONDON   -  Britain’s Keir Starmer could hardly have asked for a bet­ter first week as prime minister, from hobnob­bing with fel­low world leaders to England’s run to the final of the European football championships.

But a rebellion brewing with­in his ruling Labour party over child welfare payments and a prisons overcrowding crisis forc­ing the early release of offend­ers means the honeymoon is unlikely to last. Starmer hit the ground running upon entering Downing Street last Friday as La­bour returned to power after 14 years following a landslide gen­eral election victory over Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

In his first few days, he made bold ministerial appointments, held a press conference at his of­ficial residence and delivered his first speech in parliament as premier. Starmer then jetted off to Washington for a fortuitously timed NATO summit where he was able to burnish his statesman credentials alongside US Presi­dent Joe Biden and other world leaders. “He has wanted to do this for so long. Just getting on with it is a release and a relief for him,” Starmer’s biographer Tom Bald­win told foreign media in Lon­don on Thursday. In Washington, Starmer declared he was “deter­mined to renew Britain’s place on the world stage”, noting “there was a sense after Brexit that the UK had become too inward looking”.

He pledged to “reset” Britain’s relationship with Europe and re­affirmed UK support for Ukraine during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Starmer also backed the cog­nitive abilities of the embattled Biden, who treated his British counterpart to golden photo op­portunities in the Oval Office and on the White House balcony.

“Sitting next to Biden in the White House, he doesn’t look like an unequal,” said Baldwin.

Starmer’s three-day trip to the US capital coincided with Eng­land’s dramatic late win against the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final on Wednesday.

The football-crazy Starmer, who presented Biden with a shirt of his favourite team Arse­nal, said the UK would “certainly mark the occasion” if England wins Sunday’s final in Berlin -- a match he is due to attend. Vic­tory over Spain would likely see Starmer welcome the England team to Downing Street, continu­ing the feel-good factor in the UK’s largest country -- although not so much in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

An Ipsos poll published on Friday suggested Starmer is en­joying a bounce in popularity, as Britain largely breathes a sigh of relief at the end of a tumultuous period of Tory rule. The survey, carried out last Friday and Sat­urday, found that 40 percent of voters had a favourable view of the new UK leader, up six points from the final week of the cam­paign. “These findings suggest something of a honeymoon pe­riod for Keir Starmer, with... Brit­ons more likely to expect his gov­ernment to change things for the better than worse,” said Ipsos director of politics Keiran Pedley.

Labour’s priority is economic growth and it quickly launched a National Wealth Fund to boost private investment and ended the Tories’ ban on new onshore wind farms. Starmer was praised for appointing ministers from out­side, notably Covid-era advisor Patrick Vallance as science min­ister and international law expert Richard Hermer as attorney gen­eral. He was also hailed for nam­ing justice reform advocate James Timpson as prisons minister.

“The new government has clearly made a strong start,” Pat­rick Diamond, a former Downing Street policy advisor, told AFP.

Much of that start has also focused on blaming the Tories for a dire inheritance. Starmer’s government has commissioned a probe into public finances and a “broken” state-run National Health Service. The government announced Friday that thou­sands of prisoners will be re­leased early from near-capacity jails, with Starmer -- a former chief public prosecutor -- blam­ing the “complete failure” of the Conservatives for the situation.

Head of state King Charles III will outline his government’s legislative proposals at the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday, before Starmer plays host to a summit of Euro­pean leaders at Blenheim Palace on Thursday. Starmer is expect­ed to resist pressure from some of his own MPs to remove a con­troversial two-child benefit cap.

“The new government needs to be careful that its public nar­rative is not too gloomy,” warned Diamond. “If all the talk is of fail­ure there is a risk that the hope and optimism engendered by the election result dissipates.”