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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the first Cabinet reshuffle of the coalition government is probably just a few days away so what’s involved in a reshuffle and what can we expect from this one? Well I’ll put that to my guests and I’m joined now from Neath in South Wales by Labour MP, Peter Hain, who of course held Cabinet posts under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, so it’s fair to say he’s seen quite a few reshuffles in his time and in the studio I’ll get the view from the backbenchers with Conservative MPs Nadim Zahawi and Nadine Dorries and Liberal Democrat MP, Duncan Hames but let’s first of all get back to Peter Hain who has been through it all so many times in the past. Good morning to you Mr Hain, tell us first of all about the febrile atmosphere there must be as you wait for a government reshuffle, is there a lot of gossiping amongst you or do you keep your anxieties and hopes to yourself?

PETER HAIN: They’ll all be talking to their private offices who will be wondering desperately whether their boss is about to be moved and they’ll be hanging on to their mobile phone from that call from the Prime Minister switched through Downing Street, so it is quite a tense time for all members of the government and for the hopefuls who would like to be in government and one of the things about a reshuffle, and I predict this will happen with David Cameron, is you cannot predict what will actually occur. Take for example 2006 when Tony Blair was determined to move one of his closest allies in the Cabinet, Charles Clark, after a row over foreign prisoners as Home Secretary. Charles wanted to stay as Home Secretary and Tony offered him Defence and Charles said no, as a matter of principle I won’t stay in the government if you don’t think I’m a competent Home Secretary, as a result of which Tony lost a valuable ally. Look at what happened when Peter Mandelson resigned, it affected me in 2001, it affected me indirectly, the kind of cascade effect. Once you move somebody, particularly if you move somebody out of government, there are then all sorts of knock-on consequences so I found myself quite unexpectedly then being reshuffled out of the Foreign Office where Tony Blair had only told me a couple of days before he was delighted with the job I was doing, into Energy. So you just cannot predict this reshuffle consequence when it starts and then of course I remember in 2002 when I was first promoted into the Cabinet, sitting in Downing Street in the political secretary’s office, waiting to see the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and hearing the job I was about to get being announced by Adam Boulton on Sky before I was actually offered it by Tony Blair! So I reckon there’ll be quite a bit of that going on as well, because you’ve seen the names being speculated about, who’s going, who’s being moved and so on, we’ll see what transpires.

DM: Glad you’ve given us the plug for that, everybody should be watching Adam Boulton during the next week as that reshuffle takes place but Peter, I know you have put a lot of this in your memoir you’ve written about this, what you’re saying then is that there is a law of unintended consequences and what any reshuffle is meant to address is the perception of the government, the party in power, by the public. You are trying to say we’re focused on the job, we’ve got fresh faces, we’ve got lots of ideas but what you might end up with though is a game of three dimensional chess and just trying to fill gaps in the Ministerial portfolios.

PH: Yes, and the idea that reshuffling a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State that I read there is some speculation about somebody being moved out and replaced, well yes maybe you do freshen up the government with dynamic new people fizzing with ideas and so on but actually in the end most of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s reshuffles didn’t change much at all in terms of the direction of government and maybe we’ll come back to this issue later on in your interview but I think all the hype, and the hype around this has been extraordinary, it’s been going on for months with speculation and policy disagreements over the third runway for example at London airports and so on, over the direction of the government. Will the Chancellor – and I suspect he will because he is too close to David Cameron to be moved or sacked, will there be question marks over him because the economy is in a mess? And the coalition, will Vince Cable be moved because he is a successor to Nick Clegg, he is becoming increasingly discredited? All those questions will be hanging around but in the end, and as I say we may come back to this, it’s not really about moving the deckchairs on the Titanic, as one of Labour’s backbenchers said of Tony Blair’s last reshuffle.

DM: Okay, stay with us for that Peter, thank you very much indeed, we’ll talk now with some of those dynamic people fizzing with ideas that Peter Hain was talking about, Nadhim Zahawi, Nadine Dorries and a Duncan Hanes. Nadine Dorries, you won’t be looking longingly at your mobile phone will you, certainly not while Mr Cameron is still in power?

NADINE DORRIES: No, but most of my colleagues will be and it is very interesting what Peter has just said because actually what a reshuffle will do is possibly stabilise the relationship that David Cameron has with some of the backbenchers and some members of his own party but I feel very sorry for him actually because he is probably going to please and make friends with twenty people, make enemies of those who are demoted or moved sideways and enemies of those who are overlooked, who have been desperately – because he has waited so long to have a reshuffle there are people whose ambitions have built and built and frustrations have increased who will be waiting for that phone call and when they don’t get that phone call will be very displeased indeed.

DM: But that’s the point, Nadhim Zahawi, that I was making to Peter Hain, isn’t it, you talk about the twenty people or forty people or however many people within Parliament who are disappointed or pleased, it’s not meant to be about that, it’s meant to be about the twenty million people and more who might or might not vote for you at the next general election. You have to give out that signal that we are focused on this task and your point, Nadine, that we are not posh boys who don’t know what’s going on in the economy.

NADHIM ZAHAWI: I think that’s exactly right. I think the way David Cameron has handled this up to now has been the right way. If you are running a business you allow your ministers bed in so not reshuffling early was the right thing to do and he came under enormous pressure. The reason this is so high profile is because he has had so much pressure from the media for a reshuffle because they had been used to in a previous administration, under Labour, reshuffle after reshuffle so I think he did the right thing. Now what he needs to do with this is to make sure that those who are delivering the reforms remain focused on those reforms, that we continue to deliver welfare reform, we are delivering reform of the health service, across the board those things continue and are driven harder.

DM: Well of course we talk about David Cameron reshuffling the Cabinet but to bring in Duncan Hames here, we know that within the coalition agreement the Deputy Prime Minister has the right of veto so what would the Liberal Democrats like to see in terms of giving that message that I was talking about, that we really are getting to grips with the howling economic problems that people are so dissatisfied about?

DUNCAN HAMES: Well that is very important though I don't think that is answered by personalities, I think that’s answered by …

DM: But that’s what a reshuffle is all about isn’t it?

DUNCAN HAMES: … and I think this week we’ll see a lot of policy announcements too. One of the things that I notice as a Liberal Democrat is that because there simply weren’t enough Liberal Democrat MPs to warrant us being in every department when the government was formed in May 2010 and some government departments have effectively been Liberal Democrat free zones and I think it would be unfortunate if for the duration of this parliament that were to remain the case so there may be an opportunity to …

DM: To have more in the Ministerial ranks?

DUNCAN HAMES: Yes, such as in DEFRA for example or in Culture where there haven’t been Liberal Democrat ministers, to create an opportunity for a Liberal Democrat footprint within the work of those departments.

DM: That’s interesting, you’ve already been saying there are too many Liberal Democrats in government.

NADINE DORRIES: Exactly. I think you make up 7% of parliament, why should you have a presence in every department and at every level of government? That simply should not be the case, you have not had enough votes from the public and you do not have enough MPs in your own ranks to warrant that. In fact there should probably be fewer Liberal Democrat ministers and more Conservative ministers and it should be based – you’re the party of proportional representation, it should actually be based on the number of MPs in the coalition on the Conservative benches. How many MPs do you have?

DUNCAN HAMES: We have 57 and your party doesn’t have enough MPs to form a majority government and that’s why you’re in a coalition. I’m afraid Nadine you just have to get used to that.

NADINE DORRIES: And you have to get used to the fact that your representation in the government at the moment is probably more than it should be and not sit there and say we need more Liberal Democrat MPs and more government jobs, I’m afraid that just doesn’t work.

DM: Okay, we know where you two stand. Nadhim Zahawi, more or less Liberal Democrat MPs? .

NADHIM ZAHAWI: My answer to both my colleagues is that turning on each other or on ourselves, as we saw with Labour previously, is guaranteed to lose an election and that’s not what we should be doing. We should be working together, we are in coalition, we didn’t win the election outright, it is absolutely right what Duncan has said. I know that Duncan and his better half are both tipped for great office and I wish them great luck, I blotted my own copy book because of House of Lords reform so I guess I am in the Nadine Dorries camp right now but I think the real trick here is to work together. At the end the day, the nation will not forgive us if we resort to petty infighting.

DM: On that basis I just want to ask Duncan Hames one question about one personality, it is the Business Secretary. Okay, that is a department that you are fully in control of as Liberal Democrats with Vince Cable sitting there. Some Lib Dems are saying perhaps he should be party leader, others saying within the Conservative party what’s he been doing in Business and why is the Prime Minister now talking about getting rid of red tape and dithering while the economy burns? What’s the Business Secretary been doing, should he be moved?

DUNCAN HAMES: Well it has been a very busy department and one of the things that the Department has done is establish the Green Investment Bank, a policy I am very proud that our coalition government has been able to do together so I think he has a good record but there is clearly a really big job to do so that is why it’s important that we have our strongest Ministers leading departments, doing the very important work of putting the economy back on track.

DM: Okay, I said I’d go back to Peter Hain, let’s just get his thoughts on what might happen, I wonder what he might say. You already alluded to it, Mr Hain, in terms of reshuffling or moving the deckchairs on the Titanic, I presume you are going to tell me that without a change of policy it doesn’t really matter what you do in terms of personnel.

PETER HAIN: Well yes because the direction of the government is wrong, everybody knows it. The economy is flatlining, there is no investment, we hear this morning the Prime Minister talking about getting rid of red tape and so on, he has been Prime Minister for nearly two and a half years. You don’t achieve housing starts when the housing market is flat on its back, when building workers are on the dole, when construction is depressed, you don’t do that by spin, you do it by providing investment, support, confidence in the economy and so I think what you’ve seen here – and you saw it this morning in an interview – is David Cameron saying we’re going to stop the dithering and be decisive through this reshuffle, George Osborne when asked about the third runway and the green belt can’t give a clear answer. I think what you need is strong government to get us out of the depression with investment, supporting business, supporting big projects like the Severn Barrage which is a £30 billion private investment project, investing in housing, supporting private house building by giving them the confidence and the certainty. It isn’t about the green belt, there are plenty of brown field sites and government properties around in order to drive all of that, what you need is clear direction and that’s not what’s coming and I don’t see changing a few faces in and out of the government or reshuffling them around Cabinet posts, as fundamentally challenging the problem that this is a failing government with no clear direction and it is also incompetent.

DM: Okay, Peter Hain, thank you very much for that. I just want to get a last word from our two Conservatives just on one of the other specific changes being talked about. Have you been disappointed with Baroness Warsi’s performance as your party chairman?

NADHIM ZAHAWI: No, hi haven’t, I think Sayeeda has done a fantastic job in difficult circumstances. It’s not easy to be governing at a period when there is no money, as Labour quite rightly told us, it’s very difficult to be party chairman, to make sure that … in coalition, it’s hard work and I think her personality, her profile is the right one to cut through the noise in cities up north, to cut through the noise amongst ethnic minorities and to get the Conservative message through so I think she is absolutely vital to the Cabinet. DM: Nadine Dorries, she addresses ordinary voters in a way some of those posh boys don’t?

NADINE DORRIES: I think one of the problems for Sayeeda has been is that she has never actually been given a job to do properly. The job was split for the first time amongst a number of people rather than having, Sayeeda is not actually the sole party chairman and that’s always been the case in the past, it has always worked well in the past but for some reason David Cameron decided that he would change that and split the job between a number of people. It hasn’t worked, what Sayeeda needs is to be given the reins to do the job properly and fully. She should be kept in place and empowered to do a full chairman’s job.

DM: Okay, thank you all very much indeed for those thoughts, Duncan Hames, Nadine Dorries and Nadhim Zahawi and thanks once again to Peter Hain who joined us down the line.