A government's first 100 days have become something of a "phony war". It plunges into its programme of election promises to get all of them under way within the arbitrary deadline of 100 days and usually succeeds without much difficulty.
But if it imagines this is typical of the challenges a government must face it in for a surprise. When the new Government is doing no more than it promised at the election it can do no wrong. It has a mandate to do this much if no more.
It will need to do much more. It will quickly be confronted with problems and demands hardly contemplated before it came to office. It is only then that the public can get a good measure of the character and quality of the new people in charge.
Labour has done most of what it promised to do by tomorrow, 100 days after taking office. It has made the first year of tertiary education free, increased student allowances, introduced legislation to set new standards for rental homes, banned foreign buyers of existing houses, given pensioners a winter heating grant, extended paid parental leave, set up inquiries into mental health and the state care in a previous era, increased the minimum wage, adopted a child poverty reduction target, made cannabis legal for medical purposes and much else.
The new or improved benefits for students, pensioners and parents will become permanent for better or worse. Benefits once granted are extremely hard for a future government to remove.
