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Given that the signs of an embattled premiership are all around – defensive-sounding interviews insisting he will be in post at the next election; a rush of stories about supposed cabinet plotting – now, more than ever, Keir Starmer needs real allies. And here, at least, there is something to feel positive about.

If you talk to most Labour MPs, Starmer most likely will not lead Labour into the next election. He may even not remain in No 10 much beyond a set of Scottish, Welsh and local English elections on 7 May, which are expected to be disastrous for his party.

All that said, Starmer is not totally isolated. Unlike some prime ministers, whose connections in parliament felt largely transactional, there are people in Starmer’s working life who are genuine friends.

Additionally, as a relatively late entrant to politics, he has a large and varied collection of pre-politics friends, a group that those who know the prime minister say he leans on even more closely.

So who can Starmer count on amid a job which even at the best of moments, as he told the Sunday Times in an interview this week, can be relentless and thankless?

In the cabinet, his oldest friend is Richard Hermer, the attorney general, someone Starmer first got to know 30 years ago as a fellow lawyer, one of a number of people the PM stays in touch with form his former profession.

Lord Hermer is castigated by some newspapers and commentators as an ultra-liberal policy whisperer by the side of the throne, something insiders argue is overplayed. Starmer does, however, evidently trust Harmer on international law, with the attorney general’s initial advice about the UK steering clear of the Iran war helping shape a policy widely seen as one of the government’s few recent successes.

In the same camp of ministers who can also be counted as friends are Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, and Jenny Chapman, the Labour MP turned peer who is the international development minister.

One sign of the trust Starmer has in Thomas-Symonds, who like him entered parliament in 2015 after a career outside politics, is his brief, which involved charting the way towards the reset in UK-EU relations.

Lady Chapman spent three years working alongside Starmer on the shadow Brexit brief. After losing her Darlington seat at the 2019 election, she chaired Starmer’s campaign to become Labour leader, then working as his political secretary, before becoming a peer.

Then there are ministers who, while not necessarily close friends, are highly trusted. One is Pat McFadden, the work and pension secretary, often the person sent out on the most bruising morning broadcast rounds, for example after the Gorton and Denton byelection.

In a similar group is Darren Jones, whose loyalty and sheer organisational zeal – more or less every media interview with Jones includes a reference to his love of spreadsheets – has seen him made the Downing Street chief secretary, in charge of cross-departmental organising.

There are two concurrent stories here. On the first, whether Starmer has enough people steadfastly in his corner to keep him in the job, the answer is: probably not. But there is also the idea of how much his hinterland and friendship might help, if and when the political blow lands. Here, he feels better protected than some.

One of the notable elements in the 2024 biography of Starmer by the journalist Tom Baldwin was the repeated mention of the sheer depth of non-political friends who still surround the prime minister and their very obvious loyalty.

“They are very important,” says one person who knows Starmer well. “He definitely gets as much if not more advice from his extra-parliamentary friends.”

Spanning various sections of Starmer’s life – school, university, the law plus the five-a-side football he has played for decades – some take an enjoyably sceptical approach to their friend’s current job.

Speaking to Baldwin before Labour won the election, Colin Peacock, whom Starmer first met after rescuing him when some school bullies were sellotaping Peacock to a gravestone, said he expected his old friend would “miss his old life”.

He went on: “When it all goes wrong, I’ll be there for him, of course. I’ll be there going: ‘Told you so, told you, told you.’”

All that said, life at the political peak is so relentless that it has had an impact even on some of Starmer’s relationships.

He entered No 10 with a series of much-trusted staffers around him, most notably Morgan McSweeney, the strategist who charted Labour’s election win, but also a series of others.

Now they are pretty much all gone, bar Ben Nunn, a longstanding aide and friend who remains a regular presence in No 10 despite now working for Rachel Reeves, the chancellor.

McSweeney departed amid the Peter Mandelson scandal. Others, including Paul Ovenden, Starmer’s head of political strategy, and Steph Driver, his head of communications chief, departed in circumstances which, while varied, did not show much effort by Starmer to protect them.

This is a seeming paradox to Starmer that even some allies point out – for someone so loyal in some parts of his life, he can also be ruthless, even dismissive. As his political foes line up against him, he will hope those around him remember the first trait.