Prime ministers come to office bursting with ideas about how they are going to make Britain a better country and outperform their predecessor, but with only the haziest idea about the job itself. ‘Reality only fully dawns’, says Mark Sedwill, one ex-Cabinet Secretary, ‘when they go to see the monarch, and walk through the front door of Number 10 for the first time.’ Their first words to the nation uttered on the doorstep of Number 10 say more about them than the job to begin moments later. ‘Where there is discord we will bring harmony’, said Thatcher, quoting Francis of Assisi. ‘A country that is at ease with itself’ was Major’s aspiration. For Blair, it was to govern not for ‘the privilege of the few but the right[s] of the many’ and to ‘rebuild trust in politics’. His school motto inspired Brown to promise the nation that ‘I will try my utmost.’ Fighting ‘burning injustices’ was May’s intention, while Johnson was going ‘to restore trust in our democracy’ by ‘uniting our country’ and ‘answering at last the plea of the forgotten people’ by achieving Brexit and ‘level[ling] up across Britain’. Gus O’Donnell, who patiently waited as Cabinet Secretary to greet two incoming prime ministers, made a study of these first speeches, and notes how similar are the aspirations of the virgin prime ministers.