The new PM has just appeared outside No. 10 Downing St to give a speech.
"We are going to have hard and difficult things to do", he said - meaning not just confronting a massive deficit, but also leading a coalition government with the Liberal-Democrats: for this, we now know, is what it will be.
Much of the speech was about political reform -- putting the people back in charge of their masters. It was also a restatement of David Cameron's key idea, that Government needs to help to build a "big society". And it was filled with ideas associated with what is sometimes called "one-nation" Conservatism: that the poor and the vulnerable and the elderly need to be protected, while "those who can, should".
It was not soaring rhetoric. It wasn't even very uplifting. It was sombre. It was tough. The new Government's contract with the people has begun with some chilly realism.
