Bernard Ingham: Amid all the uneasy consensus, at least Britain has a leader who looks the part

After all, every government has a sort of honeymoon. Even Gordon Brown managed to have a rather successful one. What is more, Harold Macmillan rightly said that the greatest challenge presented to statesmen was "events, my dear boy, events". Cameron has scarcely been tested by them yet.

In another sense, first impressions have always been important, even before we entered the television age with its instant judgments based on perceptions. It is not just a matter of looking

as if you were born to rule or starting as you mean to go on; it is more a matter of whether you seem relevant – and here actions count at least as much as words and demeanour.

For me this is the "Could he?" test – could the new PM really sort things out? Could he really become a winner? In short, is he the stuff of which great Prime Ministers are made?

I have no hesitation in saying that Cameron has passed the "Could he?" test with flying colours. But that does not take us very far. In his oily way, so, I suppose, did Tony Blair – and look what happened to him, as distinct from his bank balance.

Yet, in a curious way, Cameron's early performance is more significant than that of any of his post-war predecessors because he is leading the first coalition in 65 years. Nobody consciously voted for a coalition – how can you? – and not many more, however much they may generally go along with what it is up to, actually voted for its programme as revealed so far. Lib Dem Lefties are aghast, even if they have at last got their hands on some sort of power, and Conservative Right-wingers are restive over all sorts of things, not the least of which are the referendum on electoral reform and, if not a referendum on Europe, our so far unconvincing dampener on Europe's lust for power. Within the ranks of the coalition itself, Vincent Cable never seems truly happy at his work as Business Secretary.

I frankly confess myself to seething with dissatisfaction over lots of things and especially the coalition's stupid, incompetent, impractical, punishingly expensive and dangerous so-called energy policy. You get the message. I only wish the coalition would, too.

Margaret Thatcher would, I imagine, ask everybody what else they expected. Consensus, she defined, is something we get when we can't agree. And what we've got is a Con-Dem consensus. So we had better learn to live with it for as long as it lasts. Which brings us to the nub of the question. The encouraging thing is that, whatever their misgivings, most people hope the coalition lasts and by that they mean that it succeeds. That is no mean achievement.

Cameron has so far managed his relations with Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems rather well.

He has deftly tied the Lib Dems into the dirty work that had to be done and he and Clegg look refreshingly and vigorously at one in attacking the nation's problems.

They have correctly identified the priority need to cut the nation's coat according to its threadbare cloth. Their assault on Brown's horrendous deficit is, to say the least, courageous. If they are all as single-minded in their revelatory attack on waste as Eric Pickles, this nation can look forward to a new prosperity.

This shows they are taking advantage of necessity to do other things – to get the bloated public services under control and cut down to size; to re-balance the economy in favour of wealth creation; to de-bureaucratise the system, including the NHS, by devolving power; and to demolish Gordon Brown's essentially corrupt welfare-for-life state.

Of course, it has not always been tidy or gaffe-free. Curiously for a Government led by a PR man its presentation – and especially its co-ordination – is one of its weaker aspects. But it has a leader who looks the part at home and abroad, even when he seems to have a dodgy grasp of history. Junior partner to the Yanks in 1940 my foot!

Yet so far, so good. If the coalition gets through this winter when the cuts bite into people, MPs' loyalty and Ministers' confidence, providing a new Labour leader with a shooting gallery, it might go on to complete a five-year Parliament. If it does, it will really have shaken Britain up. Cameron will also qualify for Prime Ministerial stardom.