AS Westminster winds down after a massive year and reaches for the mince pies, the PM may finally get a few days off.
His summer holiday was cancelled during the riots after he unexpectedly found himself in Downing Street in July, rather than November.
And it feels like the Prime Minister is still in a state of surprise, as if he was somehow caught off guard by power.
Surprised that he won, surprised it is hard and surprised not everyone is convinced of his excellence.
Still babbling on about plans, pledges and promises rather than doing the job.
More cynical Labour figures worry that what we are seeing play out is the hard reality of an accidental PM.
Many had written Starmer off early in his opposition days.
A solid, if dull, public servant who would rid the party of loony lefties and bring back credibility after the dark shadow of Corbynism.
Not a great thinker or political animal, a safe pair of hands that won’t scare the horses.
But a man who would ultimately lose nobly, like Michael Howard to Tony Blair in 2005.
The scale of the Tories’ implosion — and disastrous death spiral it went into after knifing Boris — blew all that up though.
And the man who was never really meant to get to No10 found his way there, and deep down is as surprised as anyone and working out what to do with power.
Starmer’s defenders hate that notion.
But with any more speeches like the one he gave last week, convincing voters there really is some magic behind the curtain is going to get extremely hard.
“Our plan for change is the most ambitious and credible programme for government in a generation,” Sir Keir said with a straight face.
The boast was up there in the levels of delusion the last government found themselves plagued with towards the end.
Not every new government initiative has to be “world beating” or proposed new law, the toughest ever.
The public, and not least Sun readers, have a good nose for such bluster and the more they hear it the less they believe it. Labour MPs were certainly not buying it either.
Many are privately aghast their PM appears to still be talking the language of an opposition leader years away from an election, rather than the guy who won the biggest majority in a generation.
I’m not sure Sir Keir genuinely believes his six “milestone” goals really were a massive political roll of the dice either.
The hyperbole last week amounted to little more than branding the bare minimum of competent government as risky business. There’s a word for that: Gaslighting.
We have eyes and ears and can see that far from being a revolution, Sir Keir was actually trying to dress up a turkey.
It’s hardly like the warning signs were not very publicly aired under the Tories
Harry Cole
And telling us this is, in fact, not a turkey but the greatest and “most ambitious and credible” turkey in a generation, insults the intelligence of the very voters you told for years you already had a plan for changing Britain.
Now I don’t doubt government is harder than any of this lot thought it would be.
But if they really did think it would be easier because they are nice lefties who would be polite to the civil service, then they really are not fit to run a whelk stall.
The blob is going to blob, but Labour ministers and advisers should have known that before entering power. It’s hardly like the warning signs were not very publicly aired under the Tories.
While there are some good aims in the missions, it’s not unique or ambitious to think we should build more houses and be able to see a doctor.
Building houses is hard, yes, but you’ve got that majority.
The NHS is a basketcase, yes, but you’ve got a mandate to fix it.
Where were the milestones for meaningful reform last week? Simply getting waiting lists down is not enough.
The NHS was haemorrhaging cash and providing sub-standard care compared to other advanced economies long before the pandemic.
Labour made a big play of being ready to reform the NHS before the election, as the only party to be able to do so.
That willingness to speak the hard truths to its own child was one of the major reasons some highly sceptical voters were able to hold their nose and let Labour back in.
But that’s all gone a bit quiet now as once again the Treasury was forced to reach for the cheque book.
Having to say all that guff out loud instead, like the PM did last week, may have been pitched as kick-starting the machine. But it sounded like a government trying to convince itself of a purpose.
If the PM and his Cabinet don’t really know where they are going, why should voters go along on the journey?
DOES the country that once administratively ran a third of the world really need to be run “a little bit more like a start-up”?
That’s what the RDPM – real deputy PM – Pat McFadden will argue in a speech to tech bros today.
He’s asking them to come and work for the Government for short stints to help rewire the Whitehall machine.
Apparently this is part of a new push by the Government to avoid “headline-grabbing gimmicks”.
IN the end, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad decided a private jet was preferable to the public feedback meted out to his fellow dictator in Libya.
Colonel Gaddafi dead in a ditch with a pistol up his bum, was the season finale many Syrians may have wished for their own blood-soaked tyrant. But it wasn’t to be.
And given how hairy some of those nice gentlemen “rebels” who have liberated Damascus are, the country is by no means out of the woods.
But one thing should be noted: Assad could have faced the thick end of Western justice for gassing his own people many years ago.
Ed Miliband blocked Britain from joining US-led strikes on his regime, giving President Obama cover to get cold feet despite insisting chemical weapons were a “red line”.
Assad was able to murder his people and rape his country of billions for another 11 years thanks to Commons game-playing by the then Labour leader that night in August 2013.
Something he should try to justify next time he’s passing a TV camera . . .
