Warning. This column contains good news, when it is an (un)truth widely acknowledged that only grim stories attract public attention. News must be something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed, says the old maxim. Well, battalions of interests want to suppress good news: the overwhelmingly Tory or Reform UK press and antisocial media sites don’t want any stories to surface that might do credit to a Labour government.

Among this deluge of disinformation and malevolence, when asked, a sour and disengaged electorate struggles to think of anything good this government has done. True, the prime minister and his cabinet are partly to blame for failing to tell their story, paint their picture, draw us a map of where they are going and why. They too often do good by stealth, afraid of what the right and business might say if they dare trumpet the strong social justice themes that drive most of what they do. But lay out what the government has done and there it is, plain as a pikestaff. There have been blunders, missteps, bad timing and wrongheaded manifesto pledges, but follow the money to define its identity. What has Labour raised from whom and how was it spent? That’s what historians will look for.

Labour inherited destitute, austerity-stricken public services that voters expected to be healed overnight by a “change” government, despite a stagnant economy, deep debt, unfunded policies and an empty Treasury. Forget Harold Wilson’s verity that a week can be a long time in politics – a year and a half is not very long for the radical changes the government has made already.

The list has to begin with Labour’s forever priority: children come first – this time with free breakfasts, cheaper uniforms and 500,000 more qualifying for free school meals in England, and 550,000 due to be lifted out of poverty across the UK with the abolition of the pernicious two-child limit. Nurseries for all is a liberation for families – and crucially a great educational boost, so let’s welcome 1,000 new Best Start family hubs in England, resurrecting the Blair-Brown flagship Sure Start policy. Many may not notice, but unsurprisingly I’m told Labour’s own polling finds that families with young children certainly do, when free childcare makes some half a million English families as much as £7,500 a year per child better off. It may take time to percolate,........

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