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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, Nick Clegg has been told by some senior Liberal Democrats to change his strategy. What’s more he is apparently under pressure to bring his predecessor, Sir Menzies Campbell, into the Cabinet and Sir Menzies joins me now from Edinburgh. Your leader has been accused of bumbling along, presumably you don’t see it like that?

SIR MENZIES CAMPBELL: I most certainly don’t and any dealings I have with Nick Clegg, which are quite frequent, make it perfectly clear that he is in charge of his brief and he is in charge of his party. Of course it’s September, it wouldn’t be September if there wasn’t speculation about leadership. David Cameron has been accused of being a mouse, there are reports that Ed Balls is shall we say less than polite to Ed Miliband, his leader. It’s the sort of thing you get in the run up to the party political conferences.

DM: Is it really or is it a bit more than that? I mean given the seniority of some of the people who have been saying there is life after Nick, no one can go on forever and he has made a few errors.

MC: Well Lord Oakeshott who began some of this, this week, has never been someone who, shall we say, finds it easy to hide his light under a bushel and perhaps he and others should get out of the cloistered comfort of the House of Lords and perhaps the seduction of the studio. What Liberal Democrats are doing in government is an essential part of the strategy which has just been outlined, if I may say so, very eloquently by William Hague. Of course there will be differences of opinion. People say sometimes that political parties are like coalitions, well the truth is coalitions are like political parties because you have differing opinions at particular times but the main thrust of what we are about and the reason for entering into the coalition still remains stabilising the British economy and that’s why, now that we have achieved a great deal of credibility, it’s right the Prime Minister, according to an article in a national newspaper today, is now considering how we can enhance the prospects for growth. I think it is a balanced sensible strategy and it is one that we would be well minded to follow.

DM: But you would accept that there is a wing in your party and there is quite a few of them, Lord Oakeshott is one of them and he does get out of the studio, as we hear he spends quite a lot of time with Vince Cable, there is a wing in the party who says well let’s have Vince, he is more of a Liberal Democrat at his heart than Nick Clegg and he is very popular with the voters.

MC: Well remember this, Vince Cable like me and others signed up to the coalition agreement. We knew when we did so that this was not going to be easy, apart from the fact that there hadn’t been a coalition government in this country for a very long time and the coalition of course was coming in at a time when the economic circumstances, the legacy of the previous government, were particularly difficult to deal with and you know, it’s not just in Britain, as I think William Hague was suggesting. If you have been following the Republican convention in the United States this last week and no doubt the Democrat convention which begins next week, you’ll see that there is a real difference of opinion in many of our fellow western economies. Now here in the United Kingdom we have the benefit of a coalition which has come together for the purpose of putting forward a common programme and it is beginning to work, something like 25% of our debt has now been reduced and if we can now move, having attained that stability and the confidence of the markets, to a greater emphasis on growth then that will be in my view entirely the right judgement to make at this point.

DM: Okay, and we are hearing that from Nick Clegg but you talk about it being quite clear in his brief, he did shock quite a lot of people last week when he came out with that wealth tax, time limited contribution from the rich to help with the economy. Have you any idea what he’s talking about, do you back it?

MC: Well I firmly back the idea that in this country we should try and move away from taxing income and taxing effort, taxing achievement, towards taxing wealth. I think that’s an entirely sensible thing to do particularly in circumstances where we are arguing for growth in the economy. We want to encourage entrepreneurship, we want to encourage people to innovate and to take risks and if you can change the balance of taxation as a means of doing that, then that’s certainly something that we should contemplate.

DM: And you mentioned the reshuffle, we’ve all been talking about that and as we heard from William Hague, he said it’s not far away. You’re being tipped for a role, do you fancy a return to the front benches? Scottish Secretary has been mentioned, how about getting your teeth into Alex Salmond?

MC: Well speculation of that kind is always very flattering but perhaps I can answer your question by saying that while the reshuffle is going on, I will not be staying close to my telephone. I spent most of Friday with Michael Moore, the present Scottish Secretary of State, in my own constituency, campaigning alongside him. He is doing a tremendous job, he is dealing with a difficult and sometimes thorny issue of how we create the circumstances for a referendum over Scotland’s future and I don’t expect to be doing anything other than what I’m presently doing and enjoying very much, being on the Intelligence Committee, being on the Foreign Affairs Committee and taking an interest, as I have for a long time, in the politics of the United States.

DM: As part of those grumblings we have been hearing, that we’ve been party to, within the Liberal Democrats about Nick Clegg, they have been saying he needs a Willie Whitelaw figure, all those years back, he was at Margaret Thatcher’s side and you’ve been mentioned. I wondered if you were already playing that kind of role, how often do you speak to the leader, how often do you advise him?

MC: Well I speak to him when he wants to speak to me. Nick Clegg’s diary, you simply wouldn’t believe the obligations and the responsibilities that he has. For example we have been talking this last week about extradition, he asked me to carry out a review of the present law here in the United Kingdom on extradition, I’ve nearly completed that, we’ve been talking about that. Also perhaps a little more domestically here in Scotland, I am the Chairman of a Commission to put flesh on the bones of the traditional Liberal and Liberal Democrat policy of home rule. I am heavily engaged so when it’s necessary I talk to Nick Clegg. He was after all my choice to succeed me.

DM: And can I just ask you, you mentioned international affairs, we all know about your interest in that, this coming from South Africa and we all have great respect for Desmond Tutu, about Tony Blair and George Bush and the Iraq war, as a party of course that opposed the Iraq war, do you think that Desmond Tutu has got a point that Tony Blair might have questions to answer before an international court?

MC: Well I’ve thought about this very carefully, I don’t believe so because you have to ask yourself, when any question of crime is discussed in any jurisdiction, you have to ask yourself whether an act was committed and whether that act was committed with criminal intent. Although I believe that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were wrong, misconceived in their determination to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I don’t believe they did so with any m intention so I don't think that’s a runner in spite of the fact that all of us have a great deal of respect obviously for Desmond Tutu because of the enormous courage he displayed during the period of repression under the apartheid regime.

DM: Sir Menzies, always a pleasure to talk to you, thank you very much indeed for sparing the time. Sir Menzies Campbell there.

MC: Thank you.