Hello and welcome. This is an audio recording of an IFG live event.

Welcome to the Institute for Government and the annual lecture by Bronwyn Maddox, the director.

My name is Richard Lambert. I'm on the board of the IFG and I'm chairing this evening's event.

The Institute for Government under Bronwyn's leadership

has played an extraordinary part in this past year. Its work on the pandemic and on Brexit has become

essential reading for politicians, policymakers, commentators, and for people like me who just want

to try and understand what the heck is going on. At the same time, it's continued with its

bread and butter

work on developing arguments for civil service reform, publishing its Whitehall monitors, and

much else beside. And one way to measure the impact of all this is to look at the explosion

of interest over the past 12 months. So there's a lot to look forward to in Bronwyn's lecture

tonight. Here's the plan.

She will speak for roughly half an hour. David Runciman will then respond to her remarks.

David, as you all know, teaches politics and history at Cambridge where he's professor of politics.

His journalism is one of the many reasons for subscribing to the London Review books.

And if you don't listen to his podcast, Talking Politics, then you really should.

After he's spoken, the three of us will talk together for a bit,

and then we'll have a decent amount of time for your questions and comments before we wrap up at 7.15.

So please start typing up your thoughts and ideas on the chat function as soon as you like.

And with that, over to Bromwich.

Richard, thank you very much indeed. Good evening and a second welcome from me.

Thank you all very much for coming, so to speak.

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