The Challenges Facing Britain Are Enormous ...It Is A Time For Unity And Working Together

THE new Prime Minister's first address to the nation, delivered from a lectern in Downing Street, was typical of the man - earnest, workmanlike and practical.

- Leo McKinstry

There was no attempt to indulge in overheated Churchillian rhetoric, no resort to Utopian visions of the future.

Instead, he focused on his Government's commitment to diligence and delivery. What lies head for the Labour Cabinet, he said, is "patient, determined work".

Sir Keir Starmer's regime emphasises perspiration rather than inspiration.

The renowned American politician Mario Cuomo, who served as the Democratic Governor of New York state for most of the 1980s, once famously declared that politicians tend to "campaign in poetry and govern in prose". That is hardly true of Starmer.

Whether behind his desk or on the platform, stolid pragmatism seems to be his only mode of operation.

But such an approach suits the mood of the country. The electorate are tired of political posturing and grandiose gestures.

They wish to see real improvements in their lives, especially through better-run, less profligate public services and an officialdom that is more interested in the needs of the country than in imposing the latest edicts of the fashionable progressive orthodoxy.

The public's agenda is not a complicated one, but our political class has miserably failed to concentrate on this core mission, preferring to promote wokery and internal party feuds. Yet that could change if our rulers adopted the Express's 10-point plan, as set out today, to revitalise Britain.

Ever since its foundation in 1900 by the publisher and entrepreneur Sir Arthur Pearson, the Daily Express has been a formidable campaigning paper, never more so than over Brexit. We played a heroic leading role in the fight for British independence from Brussels' rule because we believed that our greatness could be best secured by taking charge of our own destiny.