Westminster has been up and running for a week, and the first prime minister’s questions have been and gone. But nothing says the holidays are over quite like the return of the Sunday politics shows. Or as the BBC continuity announcer put it: “Laura’s back.”

To mark the occasion, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg had Keir Starmer’s first major broadcast interview since he became prime minister.

Filmed early on Saturday before he went on a visit to Ireland, the Cabinet room setting gave off the right prime ministerial vibes. Even if Sir Keir forgot, as he did several times at prime minister’s questions last week, that he was the leader of His Majesty’s Government and not Rishi Sunak, the furnishings were there to remind him.

Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips played a clip of the Starmer verbal slips. Whether this was payback for having to make do with health secretary Wes Streeting for their main guest, or plain mischief, was anyone’s guess.

Some of the new secretaries of state continue to sound as though they are still fighting the election, and none more so than Streeting, who referred to the Conservatives as “the last lot”. His main message, that this was a government that would not duck difficult decisions, prepared the way for more of the same from his boss on BBC1.

This time, however, the prime minister was in the mood to go further. Ahead of a vote in the Commons this week on cutting the winter fuel allowance for most pensioners, he doubled down on his determination to get the measure through. Though he did not say Labour MPs who voted against would lose the whip, it was obvious any rebels would suffer the same fate as those who defied the government on the two-child benefit cap.

'I like landscapes,' says the prime minister

Greens signal opposition to SNP budget

Are you willing to be unpopular, Kuenssberg asked.

“We’re going to have to be unpopular,” said the prime minister. “Tough decisions are tough decisions. Popular decisions aren’t tough, they’re easy. When we talk about tough decisions I’m talking about tough decisions, the things the last government ran away from, the things that governments traditionally run away from.”

In its way, that slightly garbled reply was almost as odd as the section of the interview dealing with the Thatcher portrait row and the new cat in Downing Street. Before unpacking those, let us linger for a while on the prime minister’s determination to hang tough.

There is no chance of him backing down on the winter fuel payment. To do so would undermine the credibility of his Chancellor weeks before she has to deliver her budget. It would also make a mockery of the prime minister’s “everything is not coming up roses speech” of a few weeks ago.

Tough it out it is, then. There is a difference between not caring about being popular and actively courting unpopularity. On the winter fuel payment Sir Keir seems to be going out of his way to do the latter. He would not be the first prime minister to accept falling poll ratings today if it meant winning an election later, but picking a fight with pensioners is an odd move for any government, far less a Labour one.

But then as we were reminded towards the end of the interview, Sir Keir is not your average, run-of-the-mill politician. When asked about anything remotely personal he can come across as awkward, almost eccentric. He is certainly more of a Gordon Brown or Theresa May in that regard than he is a Tony Blair or David Cameron.

While many might find that attitude refreshing there are drawbacks. Just as Theresa May regretted spillng the beans about her childhood run through a field of wheat, so, in time, might Sir Keir rue the day he went into detail about moving Mrs Thatcher’s portrait.

It was nothing personal against Mrs Thatcher, he told Kuenssberg. He simply doesn’t like anyone “staring down” at him from a portrait.

“I like landscapes. My study is my private place where I go to work, I didn’t want a picture of anyone.”

When he was a lawyer, people tried to persuade him he needed “pictures of judges staring at me the whole time”. He refused those as well.

So no portraits of judges or politicians on the Starmer walls. No photos of him with with world leaders either. “None of that, not even in the toilet … all I’ve got is pictures of the kids, and the cats now. I might tolerate Thierry Henry on the wall but that’s about as far I go.”

The Prime Minister has left himself open to teasing about his taste in paintings, and no doubt armchair psychologists will have a field day, too. If nothing else, this and the cat chat (it’s a Siberian kitten named Prince if you must know) are light relief after what has been a relentlessly downbeat start to Sir Keir’s premiership.

Though the mood was friendly enough across the Sunday politics shows, there was a sense of time and patience running out on how long this Labour government can carry on blaming the previous Tory government for all that ails the UK.

Yet much like the prime minister doubling down on the winter fuel allowance, there seems no sign of Labour letting up on the strategy this side of the budget. With the Conservatives engaged in another needlessly drawn-out leadership battle, a much diminished SNP presence at Westminster, not to mention that huge Labour majority ready to steamroller over any dissent, Sir Keir and his ministers have had things their way for far too long.

It is one thing for the prime minister to argue for pain and sacrifice today on the promise of something better in time, but he is yet to set out the details of what that might be and when it will happen. No one expects a finished portrait; a rough sketch will do. Until then, that strange sense the prime minister has of people staring at him in expectation can only intensify.