Henry Zeffman

Anyway, alas, from his perspective, modern communications meant he knew rather quickly that his stint in the Foreign Office, which was always likely to be relatively limited, but was, if you like...

kind of political reincarnation for him, was much shorter than even he might have anticipated.

So is there a third act in the David Cameron political story?

And actually, a senior Conservative said to me the other day, just to emphasise Henry's point, and this gives you an insight into the dilemmas that political leaders face, because these things are tricky trade-offs.

This person was attempting to mount an argument to me that says there are more sort of recent Conservative government ministers in prominent places in reform than there are in the Conservatives.

Now, that is a stretch of an argument to make now, but it might not be if you did a reshuffle that brought on a lot of the

intake of conservatives around 2025 of their 120 odd who only arrived in parliament a couple of years ago and therefore can make a plausible case that they are that they can't be blamed for what the conservatives did in office for those who would seek to blame the conservatives for their governing record yeah because i was wondering who benefits most from that arrangement is it kemmy baden or david cameron and it's probably both that's why it's happening

Usually for those things to be sustainable, there has to be at least at the outset that as a plausible opener.

David Cameron, so I was sent to do what's known as the pool interview, so it's where one of the broadcasters goes in to do an interview on behalf of all of them, so that basically the politician doesn't have to answer the same questions half a dozen times from half a dozen different people.

And I was sent in to do the pool interview with David Cameron, who'd just been appointed Foreign Secretary, and I was reminded, and I told him of this,

of this knack that he had developed in office as Prime Minister, which when he started as Foreign Secretary, he was a bit rusty on.

So I'm gonna stand up to illustrate this.

So I'm stood here as the interviewer, and he stood there, and I'm doing the math, or anything like that.

And as a politician,

When you get to the end of the question, and maybe you were often given three or four questions in those sort of situations.

If you really don't want to face another question, you've got to become a past master at the finishing your last answer, the very final syllable of your last word being uttered with you not moving.

And then a nanosecond later, leg it.

If you do it too soon, it looks like you've legged it.

So you don't want to do that.

And if you leave just a hair's breadth, and if I've had sufficient coffee that day, I'm going to be straight in with another question.