ANALYSIS: Chris Hipkins being the Prime Minister is strangling his hopes of becoming Prime Minister.
He's in the awkward position of wearing the cloak of governance, unable to unleash his own vision of New Zealand - only the cloak doesn't fit quite right because it's not his. It's a hand-me-down.
When his predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, unsuspectingly quit and handed it to him at the start of the year it came with her massive change agenda and promises. Because we vote for parties, not leaders, and their policy manifestos, Hipkins is duty-bound to wear it.
To feign change, he may have made a media moment out of putting a couple of unpopular policies on a bonfire and reshuffling the deck chairs in Cabinet but it's ultimately Ardern's vision he's still working on.
Labour is teetering on a precipice of peril because Ardern's work is clearly no longer popular - there's an overwhelming mood for change. And Hipkins can clearly sense it.
He said on Thursday, "When you're running the country and have the constraints of Government that sometimes, well, constrain you". And when Labour unveiled its slogan that it was "in it for you", Hipkins made the point twice that he wanted his own mandate to wear.
"In this election, I'll be asking New Zealanders for a full term and my own mandate to deliver the change they want to see."
Going on to say: "This election will be the first chance for me to fully set out my own agenda for a better future."
Hipkins is pitching to be the change Kiwis are seeking. He's a different brand of Labour to Ardern. She was of the lofty left, he is of the sturdy centre.
But he's struggling to show them he's different. His hopes of a reset after the Budget were dashed as he yet again mucked in to mop up messes (a number of which he also inherited from Ardern).
Labour is in a vision vacuum, Hipkins having told Kiwis more about what he won't do than what he will.
Governing parties usually hold off on releasing their vision for the next term until they've wrapped up presiding over the last.
There's no room for tradition when your party is bloodied, bruised and bleeding votes left, right and centre but Hipkins is still Labour's biggest asset. People like him, they just don't really like his team anymore.
There'll finally be a peek beneath his ill-fitting governance cloak this weekend when he's widely suspected to confirm his plans for the future of GST on fresh produce.
And there's clearly a big families package on the way after Labour botched the killing of the National Party's flexible parental leave Bill and left women with the impression that 'breast is best' because the idea of 26 weeks was so they could breastfeed for the entirety of that time.
Newshub understands Labour's parental leave policy will be "very soon".
One small hope for Labour is that while it's been drowning without a policy vision to cling to, National has been shovelling theirs all out - meaning there's not many big bangs left for the campaign trail.
For the next two months, as Labour unveils its policies they will be the ones getting the attention, TV news leads and newspaper front pages.
The challenge will be convincing the public that Hipkins as Prime Minister for the next three years won't be like the last seven months of mess.
That magically the day after the election, his team will have it together.
That Hipkins had a duty to his inherited Prime Ministership, but if he had one tailored to fit him it would be different.
That Kiwis need to "take a chance on Chippy".
The sooner he's able to rip off that threadbare, tired, hand-me-down of a mandate full of holes and disappointment to reveal the unshackled Labour leader underneath the better - otherwise it will smother his chances altogether.
Amelia Wade is a senior Newshub political reporter.
