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

The IFG minibus pulled rather late into London and then Brighton yesterday afternoon, many hours after leaving the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, but we will be back on the road, or rather this time the trains in just a few days, because next up in the calendar is Labour's annual conference. And this is going to be a big one, with a general election drawing ever closer, what is the task facing Kirstama in Liverpool?

Will the Labour leaders start adding detailed policies to his Big Five missions?

Will there be policy U-turns, or will we see barnacles being carefully removed from the boat?

And what challenges or traps has Rishi Sunak set out for labour?

All this to come.

With me throughout, looking surprisingly healthy after 48 hours of living and breathing conference centre air is RFG Deputy Director Emma Norris. Hi Emma, have you caught up on

your sleep? I've caught up on my sleep and I've caught up on my greens after eating an entirely

beige diet at to make a defence. And I'm delighted to be joined again by a new Shokkeleon, Britain

editor at the New Statesman and making his IFG podcast debut, Josh Simon's Director of Labor Together.

Now, Josh, can you just very quickly, for the listeners, tell us about Labor Together. Who are you?

Yes, of course, and it's great to be here.

Labor Together is a think tank that works very closely with the Labour Party and with the Labour Party's leadership to help set out and develop bold ideas and policies for what we hope will be the next Labour

Government. Okay, so before we look ahead to Labour's Liverpool get-together, let's briefly

take stock of what happened in Manchester. Emma, can you give us a load on of the mood in the Conservative

Party? Lots of people started out at conference saying, oh, it's so quiet.

It's much quieter than normal.

And look, that was definitely true.

It felt quieter overall just in terms of people and in terms of his kind of general vibe.

But I think the big point for me on Conservative Party conference this year was just how

divided the Conservative Party felt even at conference.

It was really clear there's a kind of big internal battle going on for the kind of future soul of the party.

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