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

Recess is here. MPs have fled Westminster for their constituencies or maybe even a holiday,

and politics

is going quiet for a week or so. Except, of course, it isn't, because Donald Trump is making

an awful lot of noise. The president has paused his trade war, well, except for with China,

but is still forcing Kirstama as well as the rest of the world's leaders into some difficult

choices. We will take a look.

The government's growth agenda feels rather at the mercy of whatever Trump does next, but the PM and

his team still have levers to pull and buttons to press, and this week reached for a familiar

one labelled Kwango Bonfire. So what has been announced and will it work? And then we'll turn to a

question that the government is going to have to answer very soon and that's what it wants to do

about immigration. A white paper is on the way but an IFG paper is out now and we will talk to

its author. All that to come. So the king is in Rome right now and joining me on the podcast,

fresh from her own tour of the Italian capital, is program director of the IFG Academy.

Kath Haddon. Hi, Kath. How was Rome? It was lovely. It was warm. It was incredibly busy.

But obviously, we're getting in before the king turned up and before the Easter festivities all start.

So it's probably even busier now.

Very wise.

And I'm delighted to be joined throughout by Duncan Weldon, economist, broadcaster and writer, author of 200 years of muddling through the surprising story of the British economy.

Hi, Duncan.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Is the economy in Britain

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