There are two inalienable truths in politics that bear repeating: governing is difficult and assembling an electable opposition is difficult.
And perhaps never more so than now, on both counts.
Governing in the 2020s is a pretty unforgiving business – just ask the last PM, Rishi Sunak, or Starmer.
Among Sir Keir’s ministers, I pick up two recurring sentiments about the party’s first six months in power.
The first – and you can still see it in the eyes of ministers when they reflect upon their work – is an excitement after years in the wilderness of opposition that they now have power, and are called upon to make decisions every day.
But the second is a frustration at too many mistakes.
One minister told me they were fed up at what they saw as lacklustre presentation and communication, particularly of difficult stuff like taking the winter fuel payment away from millions of pensioners.
Another acknowledged it had taken them and fellow ministers a while to step up from being administrators, getting a grip of their new jobs and getting used to taking decisions, to being senior politicians in government and taking decisions in a wider, strategic context.
“We are no longer the political wing of the civil service,” observed one Labour backbencher on that learning curve for the new government, which included the brutal removal of the prime minister’s first chief of staff, Sue Gray, not long after I was leaked private details of her salary.
Politics at Westminster feels much more competitive than the numbers suggest it should: Labour’s mountainous majority means they will rarely feel even a marginally quickened pulse when it comes to Commons votes.
But one of the cliches of 2024, because it is true, is Labour’s support feels broad but shallow.
They won a landslide majority with just 34% of the vote, a lower vote share than any party forming a post war majority government, external.
Opinion polling and approval ratings for both Labour and Sir Keir have taken a hammering since they were elected.
