Cold morning: difficult job hosting Government’s first initiative (8)
I believe the answer is:
campaign
'initiative' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'cold morning difficult job hosting government's' is the wordplay.
'cold' becomes 'C' (eg on taps).
'morning' becomes 'am' (as in pa:00 AM).
'difficult job' becomes 'pain' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'hosting' means one lot of letters goes inside another (inserted letters are welcomed in or hosted).
'government' becomes 'g' (abbreviation for government).
'pain' enclosing 'g' is 'paign'.
'c'+'am'+'paign'='CAMPAIGN'
'first' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for campaign that I've seen before include "Series of planned actions to achieve a goal" , "Series of military operations intended to achieve a goal" , "Series of operations, military or advertising" , "A series of planned activities, as for advertising" , "offensive" .)