Political news: Tory leadership candidate ‘has already blown up’ campaign

The history of Starmer’s government will be shaped by the tension between the changes he promised in opposition and the lack of funding to deliver them.

Now we can look at the first chapters of this story – public sector wages and benefits.

Everything indicates that the Chancellor will agree to pay rises for many public sector workers that are higher than the inflation rate.

Failure to do so would risk triggering a new wave of strikes, which would send a bad signal for the first few months of Labour’s government.

But it means Rachel Reeves will have to foot a multi-billion-pound bill immediately.

Its “iron-clad” fiscal rules mean this cannot be obtained from borrowing, and the supposed revenues from future economic growth will not arrive in time for this round of payments.

This leaves her with two levers to pull – one in the form of significant spending cuts and the other in the form of significant tax increases.

We may get some indication of this approach in the next 10 days when the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes to the Commons to outline the wider state of the public finances and how the pay deal fits into it.

When it comes to benefits, and in particular the two-child limit, the government has reason to believe that the situation is more stable.

Sir Keir Starmer is shielded from many political losses by his huge majority and may be reluctant to change course given polls suggesting the policy enjoys greater support among the public than among MPs.

But these scuffles are just a foretaste of what awaits us.

There will be a spending review in the autumn which will fully expose the drastic gap between departments’ needs and their availability.

The flashpoints this will create are terrifying: defence, health, social care, councils, pensions – the list goes on.

Throughout the election campaign both parties were accused of simply not being honest about the small amount of money flowing through Whitehall to fund public services.

Economists called this a conspiracy of silence.

Now that Labour is in power, keeping quiet is simply not an option for them.