Safely in office, Sir Keir Starmer continues to reveal his real manifesto – attacks on pensioners, higher fuel bills, and a whole mountain of excuses for other flops and errors that he has not even made yet.

Apparently, he will tell us on Tuesday that things will get worse before they get better and that he will not shy away from unpopular decisions.

This has often been a favourite warning from Prime Ministers nearing the end of their time in office, trying to claim that their difficulties will one day produce a happy outcome.

But it is unusual for newly elected leaders with a full five years ahead of them to talk like this. If he starts in this way, what will it be like a year hence?

This is a government in trouble within weeks of coming to office.

Beguiled by Labour‘s legendary skills at spin and planning, many expected Sir Keir to ride smoothly into power. Anything but.

Apart from proposing to concrete over the Green Belt, abandoning any attempt to control illegal migration, splurging taxpayers’ money on public sector pay and mauling independent schools, there has been little for the PM to boast about.

In fact, the chief watchword of his opening few weeks has been ‘the dog ate my homework’ or, as he and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, put it: ‘The Tories left a huge black hole in the national finances.’ Anyone who understands economics knows this to be untrue.

Absurdly he has now even started blaming the previous government for the recent violent disorders.

No doubt the Tories have not been as tough as their voters would like on law and order, but Labour, which for more than half a century has been the party of soft sentencing and politically correct policing, can hardly blame the Conservatives for the ‘cracks in our society’.

This is a government in a mess. The slashing of the winter fuel payment to pensioners looks more and more like a classic political bungle, now made even worse by the 10 per cent rise in the energy price cap, announced on Friday by the energy regulator.

It will hit those pensioners hard. Is this what Sir Keir calls a ‘government of service’? It looks, increasingly, more like the sort of administration in which the people serve the state, and the state is above our heads rather than beneath our feet.

The State must mind its own business

Long ago parents readily let their sons and (to a lesser extent) daughters do things which would now be unthinkable. Quite small children roamed the woods and fields unsupervised. Teens hitch-hiked across Europe.

Most of the time this worked out very well, but fears began to grow after some spectacular tragedies, and the young have been, increasingly, kept in cotton wool.

Last week, the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp revealed she’d let her 15-year-old son go Interrailing. He returned safely.

But we now learn she has been contacted by her local council, worried about his safety.

The incident has, ominously, been recorded in their files. Is this really the business of officials?

Parents need to have the freedom to decide how to bring up their offspring. And the young need freedom to grow up. The state has more important things to worry about