This is what Labour should attempt in its first 100 days

Drawing no direct comparisons with the current contenders for the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a president who obviously left behind a famous legacy. One of his few mistakes, however, was to invent the concept of "the first 100 days".

- SEAN O'GRADY

Taking office during the Great Depression, FDR was rightly in a hurry to get things done and made Congress sit for a special three-month session to pass major bills, which ultimately built the foundation for the New Deal. Ever since then politicians, particularly those of the same progressive persuasion, have put themselves under the same kind of pressure or, more often, been landed with this arbitrary deadline by the media.

Such is the case now, at least according to the "New Deal for Working People", which is Angela Rayner's special project: "A Labour government will need to hit the ground running," it declares. "That is why we will introduce legislation in parliament within 100 days of entering government. Stronger trade unions and collective bargaining will be key to tackling problems of insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay." The other commitment, poignant but essential, is to scrap the totemically useless Rwanda plan, something Jon Ashworth said would happen "on day one".

All this, then, should be placed on the statute book by the 100th day of the Starmer administration, which is 13 October and eminently doable if - like FDR in 1933 - Keir Starmer makes the Commons forego some of its summer break.

Otherwise, Starmer's "first steps" should come as no surprise. According to the party's statement, they would be:

1. Deliver economic stability with tough spending rules, so we can grow our economy and keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible

2. Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments each week, during evenings and weekends, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes