By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Howard has stamped his authority but faces a hard slog

Well, he would say that wouldn't he? His ill-fated predecessor Iain Duncan Smith said the very same thing.

The difference, of course, is that people are starting to believe him when they never believed IDS.

Not most pundits or poll-watchers and probably not most voters but - far more importantly at the moment - large numbers of Tories. And, worryingly for Tony Blair, just one or two of his own Labour troops.

Making his mark

Few challenge the view that Michael Howard's first 100 days have seen a transformation within the Tory party.

He has shaken up the once faction-ridden organisation, even to the point of being set to move out of the old "haunted" headquarters.

He has stamped an authority on his troops that none of his three predecessors ever managed.

The prime minister appears to be getting the measure of him.

And he has boosted morale amongst MPs by regularly beating up Tony Blair during question time.

With all that under his belt, he has now moved onto the more difficult stuff, attempting to fix a picture in the public mind of what the new Tory party stands for.

That is: liberal on social issues, committed to improving public services and slashing the size of government and bureaucracy, tax cutting and pro-actively Eurosceptic.

Grasping the nettle

The fact that he could make the sort of speech on Europe that he delivered in Berlin on the eve of his 100th anniversary spoke volumes about his confidence.

No previous Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher has managed to hold the party together behind a single view of Europe.

He may not have succeeded yet, of course, but the signs are good and the very fact he made it was another indication that he intends to grasp all the nettles and may avoid getting stung.

If he can persuade large numbers of people he really is in with a chance of winning then it is just possible he really could start a bandwagon

It has not been all one way, however, and some are already predicting that his honeymoon period is coming to a close.

The Hutton report whipped the rug from under him in a pretty spectacular way.

By repeatedly setting Tony Blair up for a resignation demand before the report was published, when it eventually came he was left holding only an empty pistol in his hand.

It was widely believed he had simply set the bar too high for that particular confrontation. But the resignation call still came a little later, after further revelations about the now infamous 45 minutes from doom claim.

Good headlines

Some saw that as a miscalculation. And he has not repeated the demand since. He has, however, been somewhat reprieved by the public backlash against Hutton and Tony Blair's trustworthiness.

Equally, the past three question time sessions have not been as powerful as his earlier ones. The prime minister appears to be getting the measure of him.

He is as aware as anyone else in Westminster that some of his good fortune is down to the positive press he has received.

That was, at least in part, the result of much of the media being eager to find a genuine opposition to the government so they could stop playing the role so overtly themselves.

In Mr Howard they saw a serious operator. Now, with a general election possibly only a year away, the real hard slog starts for Mr Howard.

He knows he probably has only one go at this and, certainly until now, most serious Tories have accepted that his job was to slash the Labour majority, maybe even land Tony Blair with a dangerously slim lead in the Commons.