Well, that’s that then. After six weeks of drama and farce – indeed, after fourteen years of drama and farce – the United Kingdom at last has a new government.

This is what the reactionary Right has repeatedly called “Starmergeddon” – or as one of its victims on the night called “electoral Armageddon” and another the “Starmer tsunami”.

It was also something of a foregone conclusion. Throughout the course of the campaign, Labour had after all precisely maintained its twenty-point lead over the Conservatives.

It wasn’t, however, until election day that The Sun newspaper – if only to continue its decades-old record of backing the winner – chose to announce that the Labour leader had “won the right to take charge."

It had added, though, that he “has a mountain to climb."

He certainly has. Even boosted by what the BBC’s political editor described as a “spectacular” parliamentary majority, Keir Starmer now faces the Herculean challenge of how to deliver on his promises without raising taxes, extending borrowing, or crashing the economy.

The week before the election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies – a highly influential think tank – complained that Labour’s plans to rebuild public services were pretty much unfunded. The new Chancellor has repeatedly claimed that increased revenues would come from economic growth, but her party’s projections have been optimistic to say the least, in terms of their world-beating ambition for the country’s future GDP.

Some economists have suggested that there’s no way that a Labour government could achieve the kind of fiscal miracle they need to pay the nation’s bills without bringing the UK back into the European customs union, a move which the party has vowed not to make.

But even if they were to do so, it remains unclear how the UK’s long-term economic growth will help the new government pay for its most urgent priorities in terms of healthcare, social care, education, and green development.

However, at least the country is breathing a sigh of collective relief at the fact that we’re no longer being run by a bunch of self-serving clowns who, in their last weeks in power, thought that placing illegal bets on the date of an election already known to them sounded like a good idea.

At the height of the campaign, one senior Tory had compared the election date gambling scandal with Boris Johnson’s pandemic ‘Partygate’ controversy, saying that it looked like there was one rule for the British people and another rule for senior members of the Conservative Party. This candidate observation led to one of his own colleagues describing him as an “[expletive deleted] traitor”.

That Tory colleague had added, “Why make that comparison? It might be true, but why make that connection for people?”

So, while it might be exaggerating to suggest that the UK woke up on Friday morning to a bright new political dawn, it appears that a very large number of British people are profoundly relieved to have got shot of what might charitably be described as an indecorous shower of xenophobes, hypocrites, liars, cheats, thieves and fools.

Indeed, perhaps the person who most regretted Mr. Starmer’s victory wasn’t Rishi Sunak (as he eyes more lucrative opportunities in sunnier climes) but would have been Sir Keir himself.

“Change begins now,” he announced as he secured not just a comfortably convincing mandate but a landslide victory.

And so the famously indecisive Labour leader now has to make the tough decisions. He has to come down on one side of each argument. He must become what one newspaper on Friday morning called “Keir Stormer”. He needs to make his mark.

It's said that the character of Mark Darcy, the romantic lead in Helen Fielding’s original Bridget Jones novels, was based in part upon the hero of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and in part on a handsome human rights lawyer who was making his name in 1990s London. That dashing young barrister was of course none other than Keir Starmer.

It might now hope that he might bring just a little of that flair and moral strength into government Those were certainly traits that have been sorely lacking during much of his tenure as Labour leader, and through the course of an election campaign in which he played it so safe that his audiences could barely stay awake.

There were times on his journey toward Downing Street when it felt like we might have found more charisma and inspiration in a brown paper greengrocers’ bag, a bag that may once have contained a plethora of juicy ripe fruits but which now only offered a dozen or so dried-up husks, seedless and withered on the vine.

In fact, his campaign was characterized by what became known as its “Ming vase” strategy, so careful were the Labour team to ensure that he got over the finishing line without dropping his precious prize. It was after all a campaign through which, as the BBC’s political editor put it, the frontrunners were “wracked with paranoia about complacency” – even as the disgraced former premier Boris Johnson warned of the likelihood of Labour winning a “sledgehammer majority” – while a former Conservative Home Secretary announced that her party needed to prepare for the “frustration of opposition” and the Tory Work and Pensions Secretary predicted a record-breaking Labour landslide.

Caution of course has its place in government, but so do commitment, conviction, and courage.

Nobody wants a return to the senseless bravado of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’ premierships (other than a few hedge fund managers who enjoy betting against the British economy). Indeed, Ms. Truss lost her seat on election night, perhaps an inevitable fate for the former leader who lost the country so much.

But neither does anyone want to see an administration paralyzed by indecision. As he assumes his place in the Downing Street pantheon, Sir Keir will need to regain his capacity to stand by his beliefs and to take calculated risks, if the country is ever to escape from its current sorrowful state.