Your assumption is correct. This will not be an easy or a smooth path. And it will happen in a few months. They’ve been talking about needing 10+ years to deliver their goals. But they need to show enough progress in about 4 or 5.

This was an interesting election.

• Labour won in a landslide, but voter turnout was low (lots if thoroughly disillusioned people).
• A lot of the new seats they won were by narrow margins, indicating that while they have a mandate, it’s not as emphatic as the MO count might suggest.
• Regardless of their policies/objectives, Reform made good gains for a new party. Not many MOs to sit for it, but they will feel invigorated by how many races in which they outpaced the Tories.
• The Liberal Democrats has a fantastic night, increasing their MP count by something like x7.
• The Scottish independence cause took a hit with the collapse of the SNP.
• This election was a spectacular culmination of missteps (both individual and organizational) for the Tories. And this might have been a mortal wound for a nearly 200 party that will massively change British politics. Such a collapse hasn’t been witnessed for centuries. If they survive it might be as a nationalistic husk within which the Reform party takes up residence. Though nothing is certain for the Tories at this point. They might come back from the brink of death; they might shuffle back to the centre; they might become a third party for the next couple of decades; etc. Labour had to do a huge rebuild over the last 5 years and managed it. But their situation is very different from the Tories, so that analogy isn’t the best.