BBC“It’s not at all how I imagined winning would be,” a minister reflects as the government hits its 100 days in office.
There have been slips and accusations of sleaze. Scores of announcements. Enormous international events.
The PM himself admits it’s been “choppy”. Even in the last 24 hours the government has blundered into a row with a big investor after a minister urged consumers to boycott them.
It was the US President Franklin D Roosevelt who came up with the entirely arbitrary concept of 100 days – those magical first few months when a leader has the chance to wow the public.
In FDR’s case, it was after America’s Great Depression.
Labour argues as loudly as it can that their inheritance was pretty dreadful too – and his first few months have had their fair share of disappointments.
There’s been a Downing Street staffers’ soap opera. A slump in the polls. Ructions in the party about a plan to take cash away from millions of pensioners. That’s the stuff of Labour nightmares.
Yet we've also seen ideas that are stuff of the party's dreams. There are sweeping new rights at work. New laws to help get houses built. The railways coming back into public hands.
It's been a topsy-turvy start – but what kind of government is this really turning out to be?
In the last few days I’ve been spoken to more than twenty different sources – cabinet ministers, MPs, officials and party insiders, about what has gone right and what has gone wrong as the government comes of age.
Getty ImagesWhat’s gone right?Let’s start with what Sir Keir Starmer and his hundreds of MPs might be posting on their social media, sticking on leaflets, or boasting about in interviews.
The government has, as promised, gone ahead with many of the plans it committed to in the Labour manifesto – whether that is shaking up the planning rules, going ahead with nationalising the railways, giving workers many more rights at work, creating GB Energy or getting rid of one-word Ofsted judgements in England.
Like them or not, these are chunky measures designed to make big changes to the country. “Our agenda is massive,” one minister says, “and I feel really optimistic.”
A senior figure in the party warns colleagues that “things are absolutely recoverable” – reminding others that plenty of things went wrong in 1997 for Tony Blair’s new government, and they won big again in 2001, then again in 2005.
At home, many point to the prime minister’s handling of the summer riots. “He is a serious man, he is made for it,” says one cabinet minister, adding he was “absolutely comfortable and resolute…he knew what to do, and gripped it completely”.
Another insider wonders: “imagine how wrong that could have gone,” if the government’s approach had been different on the riots.
There are visibly better relationships between Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont, with the new Council of the Nations and Regions.
Attention has been lavished on the English mayors too, not just in the grip and grin of photocalls, but being plumbed in to policies at an earlier stage of the planning.
Internationally, Sir Keir Starmer appears to have made good connections, grappling with multiple foreign crises.
One observer says on the world stage he has a “big advantage which is political stability and strength”, describing the PM as “careful and confident” in those kinds of head to heads.
Some nerves have been calmed by the No 10 reboot – with the exit of Sue Gray, given a P45 from her big job as chief of staff, Sir Keir has “shown he can be ruthless”, says an MP.
In other words, multiple sources have suggested that as they hit 100 days in office Labour needs to take a breath remember it won, and won big.
They’re telling themselves that a new government doesn’t have to be defined by a scrappy first few months, when the clamour around a few political mistakes crowded out the attention being paid to big reforms that had been planned for.
"The good thing is you are actually playing on the pitch, even if you still have to get fit," says another MP.
A cabinet minister says: “It’s just so good to be in government; it’s really, really tough but any tough day is better than 14 years of carping on in opposition.”