Hello and welcome.

Dodging the television debates and manifesto launches and much about the royal family,

inside briefing is back for another week of getting beyond the politics and making

sense of it all. I'm Bronwyn Maddox. We've had the first round of combat with parties flinging

promises of billions at each other to see who does the most damage. Signs so far that voters are

sceptical that party leaders will deliver much of it and we've still got three weeks to go.

This week we want to get past the skirmishing to see what the election and the last

few extraordinary years mean for our constitution, famously not codified or written down

all in one document, but still the underpinning of how the country works.

We're also going to take a closer look at one of the great temptations that seems to

lead so many new prime ministers down dangerous paths. No, not the horde of people queuing up to say, yes, Prime

Minister, but the creation of brand new government departments. Is that a chance to make a real

change, a meaningless fiddling with a Lego bricks of Whitehall, or an expensive distraction?

And we'll speak to Gus O'Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary,

about what it's like to be the country's most senior civil servant

in the middle of a general election campaign.

Joining me on today's podcast is the IFG's constitution expert, Kath Haddon.

Kath, hi.

Hi.

Is it true, you bagged yourself yet another tour of Downing Street this week?

I did, yes, not my first time going to Downing Street, but I got the chance to go on an excellent full tour by somebody in Downing Street, which meant I could see whether or not my historical knowledge was better than theirs.

Back to as our always popular senior researcher, Maddie Tiemont Jack.

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