On 11 May, David Cameron succeeded Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, taking the helm of the country's first coalition government since 1945 - not to mention being, at the age of 43, the youngest British leader since Lord Liverpool in 1812. On 18 August, Cameron will mark his first 100 days in office. Critics and supporters alike would agree that the new Prime Minister has presided over a frenetic few months. The much-mocked Tory election slogan "Vote for change" has been borne out: there has been change aplenty, change enough.
So, how should we judge Cameron's initial period in power? The notion of the "first 100 days" was pioneered as a measure of American presidential dynamism by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he took office in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. It has since become a symbolic, if artificial, benchmark for assessing the early successes of a US president - successes personified by FDR himself, who pushed 15 major bills through Congress in his first 100 days.
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