Currently this writer is sitting in the Pullman Hotel in Liverpool watching hundreds of contractors, Labour party staff and volunteers put the finishing touches to the first annual conference of a sitting Labour administration in fifteen years.
Conferences are big business.
Industry lobbyists and journalists vie with delegates to glad hand the big beasts of today - Rayner, Reeves and Streeting - alongside the lions of yesterday - Brown, Mandelson and Blunkett.
There’s a palpable feel-good factor, despite the background noise of internal sniping.
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The prime minister probably expected a smoother ride into conference season.
As it was, Arsenal beat Spurs 1-0 last Sunday; it turned out to be the best news of the week for Keir Starmer.
The Labour leader, like his favourite team, is efficient and prefers set pieces.
Arsenal is consistent on the pitch but not flashy. Following the ‘all sizzle no steak’ approach of the previous Tory administrations, it’s an image Starmer aspires to.
His professed political hero is Harold Wilson.
Wilson famously quipped: “The main essentials of a successful prime minister are sleep and a sense of history.”
Having won a whopping majority, Starmer is certainly driven by a sense of history; though it’s debatable whether he’s sleeping well with the Tory press gnawing at his lifestyle and treacherous jumped-up special advisers venting their spleen over their more-than-generous salaries.
Many of the individuals who end up as special advisers are usually young, polypocket-filling graduates with little work-life experience or understanding of the realities of serving in government. Fewer still have any skills pertinent to their minister’s brief.
And yet, their lack of self-awareness leads some to believe they are are priceless when it comes to value. Those whinging need a dose of reality - preferably attached to a P45.
Two of the great weaknesses of modern politics are the rise of test tube special advisers, fresh from university, high on ambition and low in discernment; and the emergence of glass-jawed, prima donna (former Spad) politicians, whose self-righteousness is only matched by their self-regard.
Political honeymoons are usually short-lived but this government must feel as marital rot set in before they left the wedding reception.
Starmer was more than fortunate when the skilful Morgan McSweeney hitched his star to the cautious but ambitious Labour leader.
Picking up the pieces after the Corbyn era, McSweeney was the architect of the Labour victory. He understood being populist doesn’t cut the fat with the electorate. Believability and credibility does.
What Starmer lacks in charisma, he makes up for with an abundance of confidence and capability. Through him, Morgan was able to present a credible alternative to the British voters.
That said, political strategy played only one part in sweeping Labour into power.
Full credit must go to the self-destruct Tories who drove a stake through their party fortunes with internal fighting, divisive personalities, economic incompetence and more than a whiff of corruption.
Starmer’s decision to convince a senior civil servant of the calibre of Sue Gray to become his chief of staff was inspired.
She took the post because she genuinely believes it to be an extension of her long career in public service. And it is.
Gray’s job really only came into being post the election and there’s little doubt her presence ruffles some feathers both within the Labour Party and amongst the Whitehall mandarins.
The bruised egos of a handful of self inflated apparatchiks needs put to bed. Their actions betray their own superficial loyalties. The blatant misogyny in the media reporting (including by the BBC) towards the salary reveal is staggering.
Whitehall is always wary of new governments and more so when someone like Gray knows the skulduggery of the system.
To differentiate from previous governments by the entitled elites, the Labour slogan calling for change must now materialise into something concrete.
As the late lamented Labour leader John Smith once said: “Now is the time to harness the extraordinary potential of ordinary people.”