Starmer isn't the first PM to have a bumpy first 100 days

Tony Blair tried to warn Keir Starmer. He said in a radio interview before the 1997 election that he would not have "some grand programme - in the first 100 days, you do these 30 or 40 things. I think that type of politics usually does end in tears."

- JOHN RENTOUL

Yet Blair, too, fell victim to the temptation to overclaim and to set himself unrealistic deadlines. He was much mocked for presenting an “annual report” of the government’s first year, in a big press conference in the Downing Street garden in the summer of 1998 – which was notably thin on actual achievements.

And Blair’s first 100 days were bumpier than most people remember. There was a fuss about Derry Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, ordering wallpaper costing £59,000 to redecorate his state apartment in the House of Lords. There were complaints about the terms on which the UK handed over Hong Kong to China on the expiry of its lease at the end of June 1997. Just before the 100 days were up, Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, ended his marriage when he was told at Heathrow airport, with his wife, that his affair with Gaynor Regan was about to be reported.

None of that mattered much in the long run, just as most of Starmer’s embarrassments will soon be forgotten. The big difference between then and now, though, is that Blair was freakishly popular, and remained so, while Starmer is not and is becoming less so. That in turn reflected not just their different characters but the nature of their inheritances.