Looming over Sir Keir Starmer’s first speech to Labour conference as Prime Minister is the first budget of his fledgling government.

In just five weeks, his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will stand up in the Commons and… well, we know it’s going to be painful. The PM’s already told us that.

Exactly how painful?

Sir Keir prepared his party for the worst.

“Look, I understand many of the decisions we must take will be unpopular. If they were popular, they’d be easy,” he told the delegates packed in the conference hall in Liverpool.

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If there was a theme in the hour-long address, it was exactly that, keep the faith, but there are no easy answers.

Easy answers, he told us, are for Tories and populists.

There will be “practical solutions that work,” but there will need to be trade-offs.

There will be no “false hope” but a “long-term plan.”

“It will be hard,” the Prime Minister said. “That’s not rhetoric - it’s reality.”

He did, in fairness, tell delegates that there is a “light at the end of this tunnel” but getting there would involve a “shared struggle.”

It’s been a strange conference. It should be a big celebration. Labour has returned to power after 14 years in opposition.

They have 411 MPs, a majority of 174 and yet, while I don’t think it could be described as downbeat, the mood’s been a little restrained.

When I last came to Labour conference in 2022, there was a real sense of excitement and buzz among the delegates.

But the 80-odd days of government that have gone and the days still to come — nevermind the rows about freebies — have taken a toll.

I suppose that’s the thing about faith. It has to be tested.

One of the big questions for which there is no easy answer — and one I’ve been asking all week — is what does this all mean for Scottish Labour and their bid to replace the SNP as the Scottish Government in 2026?

The warning from Dr Patrick English, Director of Political Analysis at YouGov, was stark.

“When we talk to voters about the new Labour government they they tell us they're quite disappointed,” the expert told the crowd at a fringe event organised by the Scottish Fabians.

“Pre-election, they wanted a change, Labour campaigned on delivering a change. One of the key bits of qualitative info that we're getting now from voters is they're saying, ‘well, looks about the same.’

“That's quite a difficult thing. If that really takes hold, that's going to be a very difficult thing for Labour in Scotland and across the UK, the idea that after all that change, it's just the same. Very tricky position.”