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

I'm Hannah White. Chiefs of Staff aren't meant to become the story, but Sue Gray most definitely did, until she wasn't.

After an endless stream of reports of dysfunction and disquiet became the recurring theme of this

government, Kirstarmer finally decided to remove Gray from his number 10. So what now? How will

his new look operation function? And what does this reset mean for government?

Away from the briefings and counter-briefings that can dominate conversations in the corridors of power,

there are a whole lot of issues that voters want this government to get on and deal with.

So what can Stama and his team do to shift the narrative and turn around Labor's plummeting

poll numbers? And just how hard are some of the policies that they

want to deliver to deliver? And just when you thought that Labor was serving up Westminster's

biggest headlines, the Conservatives go and stun everyone with their latest round of their

leadership contest. James Cleverley is out, which means Kemi Badernock and Robert Jenrick are through

to face the members. So what on earth is going on? We'll take a look. With me throughout are the

IFG's programme director, Nahal Davison, and our senior researcher Jordan Urban. Hello,

both. Hi, Hannah. Hey, Anna. And I am delighted that Luke Trill,

the UK director of More In Common, is also here. Hi, Luke. How are you? I'm very well, thank you,

and thank you for having me. Great to have you on. So let's make a start with the number 10 drama.

Luke, were you surprised when you heard that Sue Gray had left?

I have to say, by the time it was announced, it seemed to me like it was becoming a matter of when, not if.

I mean, I think we can all agree that Labour's first 100 days haven't quite been the golden honeymoon that they might have hoped for.

And I think just across a series of issues, whether it was the handling of freebies, stories coming out of Downing Street,

or indeed handling a policy announcement, like the Winter Fuel announcement, it wasn't

...