This is the BBC.

I felt pretty nostalgic this week.

Not nostalgic for all those reshuffles I've covered as a reporter.

Reshuffles that invariably go wrong.

They invite the wrong people in.

They lose the name or the number of the person they want.

Or simply people won't do the jobs that they're offered.

I recall one occasion when Tony Blair was Prime Minister

getting three phone calls in the five minutes before the news at 10.

The first one told me that Derri Irving,

the Lord Chancellor and friend of Tony Blair's and formerly his boss,

was definitely going to leave the government.

The next call from the same source told me that he was staying in the government

and finally I got a third call just before going on air saying no no,

he was leaving the government.

And afterwards I thought this source clearly doesn't know what's going on

until I checked out and it was a precise description of what happened in those minutes.

Irving was out, he was in and then he was out again.

As he dug his heels in and Tony Blair finally had to make up his mind what to do,

these things do happen, which is great material for reporters

and great material for satirists.

Well the guest on this edition of Political Thinking,

...