Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.

I'm Hannah White.

So it is the morning after one of all, perhaps the most significant day in this government's lifetime to date.

Rachel Reeves's spending review

was eagerly awaited, at RFG, painfully negotiated and is now being painstakingly picked apart.

And guess what? That's what we are going to do on today's podcast, because the spending review is the only story in town today, and that will shape what this government does

and what it prioritises for much of this Parliament. So, which departments will be happy,

and which will be feeling hard done by? What does it mean for public service performance across the

country? Has the much-helded vision of mission-led government survived? And what does it mean for the Chancellor and, of course,

for Kirstarma? So much to discuss and who better to discuss it all with than the top IFG duo of

Deputy Chief Economist Tom Pope and senior fellow Giles Wilkes. Hi both. Hi, hi, Hannah.

And I'm delighted that we are also joined by Gideon Skinner, Senior Director of Politics at Ipsos Murray.

Thanks for being here, Gideon. Thanks, Hannah. So, Charles, I want to begin with you. The narrative that the

government was trying to create around this spending review, what was the message that Rachel Reeves

do you think was trying to send to the country?

Well, I guess it's three words, which is growth, stability and health. They've always been

trying to push those across. In fact, all the sort of pre-briefings we had received before it came out,

those were the big emphases. And they want to say, look, we believe in growth, so we've done this

gigantic piece of capital investment, which we all knew about, but still the details of it can often

be quite spectacular. We believe in health. The NHS is in a mess with those seven or eight

million on the waiting lists. And so we've put record amounts of money. It's always going to be

a record amount of money with the NHS because it's such a big number to start with, but they're doing that. And this idea of stability or security,

...