Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government. I'm Hannah White.

When there's trouble on the home front, the best thing a Prime Minister can often do is to head overseas,

and that's exactly what WishySoonak's been doing. The Prime Minister jetted to the G head overseas, and that's exactly what Wishy Sunak's been doing.

The Prime Minister jetted to the G20 in India for some intense global diplomacy.

So how significant to these trips, and what did Sunak get out of this one?

We'll talk to someone who is on the plane with the PM.

Is there a spy in our midst? The big story in Westminster is Parliament's security, or lack of it.

We'll take a closer look at a story that's caused shock in SW1.

And then we'll turn to a policy question that will play a big part in the next election.

The government's promised to level up the country.

Labor has now said it would deliver real-life leveling up.

But is the centre of government actually capable of reducing regional inequality? A new

IFG report has the answers and will speak to its author. I'm joined throughout by my IFG colleague Alex

Thomas, who leads our work on the civil service and policymaking. Hi Alex. Hi, Hannah. And I'm delighted

that John Stevens, political editor at the Daily Mirror, is with us again. Hi, John. How was your summer?

Hi, Hannah. Yeah, it was lovely. Thank you. It was good. I'm afraid I've returned to Westminster and caught some

kind of lurgy. So apologies to everyone for my croaky voice throughout this. Let's start with

Rishi Sunak's trip to India. John, you were on the plane with the PM. What's that actually like?

Yeah, it was good. Those trips are always quite interesting.

They are usually quite busy, quite a mixture of domestic and foreign stories,

because for journalists like me who don't work for friendly publications or publications

which are clustered friendly, you don't get that much face time with the Prime Minister,

...