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

I'm Hannah White.

So we were really going to try this week to start by talking about something other than Donald Trump, but unfortunately it has proven to be impossible.

It's already a week, amazingly, since that explosive and unsettling White House press conference

when Trump and J.D. Vance, the vice president stunned the watching world as they tore into

Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky. Since then, we've seen Zelensky travel to the UK to meet

the Prime Minister and the King. We've seen Kirstama win praise for his hosting of a defence summit

in London. But then the US paused its deliveries of military aid to Ukraine and Zelensky issued

a desperate sounding promise to work under the strong leadership of Donald Trump. And after all this, well, who knows what's going to happen next?

All the while, the government here in the UK is trying to make day-to-day decisions about domestic issues

and tough spending choices with not a lot of money to spend.

After the aid budget, what could be next to face some cuts?

We will take a look.

Because spending money the right way and ensuring public services perform well is at the heart

of what government is all about. And a new IFG report, the first in a series on local public

service performance is taking a look at prisons. We will speak to its author. All this to come. Joining me throughout

is IFG's senior fellow, Jail Rutter. Hi, Jill. Hi, Hannah. And I'm delighted to be joined by a friend

of the show and EU expert Anna Mennon. Hi, Hannah. Hi, Anna. Okay, let's begin with the latest

efforts to find a way to bring about a peaceful end to the Ukraine conflict.

Donald Trump promised to have it all sorted in 24 hours. It's taking a little longer than that,

though. So could Kirstama be the man with a better plan? Jill, let's start with some optimism,

if you can. A lot of people seem to think that the UK Prime Minister has been putting in an

...