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

The sun is out, the clocks are going forward, you can't move on social media for pictures of magnolia,

and spring may nearly have sprung, but the fiscal forecasts made for a rather gloomier spring statement

than Rachel Reeves would have liked. Growth has been weaker than expected, Donald Trump has been

as erratic as predicted, neither helps the Chancellor who has chosen to cut welfare budgets in order

to keep the books as balanced as possible. So what should we make of the

state of the economy and Rachel Reeves's attempts to turn it around? Who will cause her a bigger headache?

Labor backbenchers or the President of the United States? And just how difficult are the choices

awaiting the Chancellor in the future? And then we'll take a deeper dive into one of the government's

missions, which is also sort of one of its milestones, because a new

IFG report on Left Behind Groups sets out some of the tensions in its plans, which the government is

going to have to address. Joining me throughout, fresh from a spring statement day of media

appearances on College Green is IFG chief economist Gemma Tetlow. Hello, Gemma. Hi, Alex. And IFG

senior fellow and one-time treasurer official Jill Rutter is also here. Hi, Jill. Hi, Emma. And IFG Senior Fellow and one-time treasure official Jill

Rutter is also here. Hi, Jill. Hi, Alex. And I'm delighted that we're joined again by Stuart Wood,

Lord Wood of Anfield. Stuart, I've never quite worked out how you got that past the Garter King of Arms.

But anyway, a Labour peer and a former advisor to Gordon Brown as Chancellor and then Prime Minister. Thank you very much, Stuart, for being with us. Hello, lovely to be with you. So, Stuart, just to start with you, this, you know, we assume is not

where Reeves would have wanted to be less than nine months after Labour had turned to power,

but was it where she should have expected to be? I think she's been a little bit unlucky.

I mean, as Richard Hughes, the head of the Office of Budget

Responsibility has said over the last 24 hours, growth in the second half of last year was much

more sluggish than people imagined. And it's not just in Britain, and maybe British factors as well.

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