Most Labour voters believe that the question of Britain's EU membership is not settled. Many would like to reopen the issue. Is our new PM one of them? 

After all, in 2016, he said: 'The EU referendum result was catastrophic for the UK, for our communities and for the next generation.'

A little later, during his period in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, Sir Keir called for a second referendum to give the people a 'confirmatory vote' on any deal with Brussels.

While his open flirtation with Remainers ended after he became Labour leader, our new premier may even so still have a yearning for Brussels. We shall see, in practice, over the coming years. 

But an early indication is the fascinating gathering of the European Political Community (EPC) at Blenheim Palace.

The venue is Winston Churchill's birthplace and triumphantly celebrates one of the Duke of Marlborough's many 18th century victories over the French. 

But the EPC is a wonderfully misty body, embracing the EU but not part of it, which might have been designed for the putting out of feelers. 

And the meeting, originally convened by Rishi Sunak in another age, may now serve such a purpose.

The new government is expected to discuss 'dynamic alignment' between the UK and the EU, allowing a renewed closeness to the Single Market and the Customs Union without us actually having to join them.

This may look attractive, especially to travellers affected by increasingly pernickety border controls on such things as pet passports. 

But in every case, the main adaptations will need to be made by London, turning us into a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker, undoing the purpose of Brexit.

The EU is sternly opposed to what it regards as cherry-picking, by non-members, of which rules they will accept. 

How far might such a process go? 

The struggles over the Northern Ireland/Ireland border have shown that the EU is a tenacious negotiator and ready to use any opportunity to assert itself. 

Now the British Government is far less committed to Brexit than the Tories (to put it mildly), events will need careful watching. Of course Sir Keir has won a decisive parliamentary majority and we must all respect that. 

But that majority is based upon a startlingly small 33.8 per cent of those who voted. By contrast, the majority for Brexit was 51.9 per cent.

Sir Keir Starmer has held many opinions on Brexit, and may hold a few more as time goes by. But that decisive majority still binds him to support the will of the people.

 

The new Health Secretary Wes Streeting clearly hoped to catch attention with his proclamation that the NHS is 'broken'. 

This is now his 'policy'. 

Apparently, we all know that. But it's not quite true. 

Overworked frontline staff will be insulted by the remark. And thanks to decades of enormous spending, the NHS is often effective and sometimes miraculously good.

That said, it is also often failing and unsatisfactory.

If Mr Streeting is to fix it, he must grasp this complexity. 

The Prime Minister's plan to monitor the NHS with a 'Mission Delivery Board', which sounds like something out of the 1940s, is, alas, unlikely to make much difference.

But Mr Streeting has crafted his official permanent excuse for everything that goes wrong: 'Well, we said it was broken.'For a generally creditable politician, this is a bad start in office.