Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhost, and this week, after the shock return of David Cameron to the cabinet,

we look at what the former Prime Ministers re-emerges to frontline politics means for UK diplomacy,

the direction of the Conservative Party under Rishu Sionak following the reshuffle of his top team, and how exactly this bold move managed

to take everyone in Westminster by surprise.

Joining me to discuss this, we have not one but two of Lord Cameron's new colleagues in the

upper chamber in Baroness Kate Fall, who was his deputy chief of staff during his six years in Downing Street,

Lord Ed Vasey, a former culture minister and leading

Cameroon, as well as Professor Meg Russell, director at the UCL's Constitution Union.

So I've got to say, I didn't have David Cameron to Foreign Secretary on my reshuffled bingo

card on Monday morning, and obviously he brings vast experience, but also quite a lot of baggage

from his time in Cabinet before. Ed, obviously,

you worked on it. What did you kind of make of it as a kind of political move and how much of a

surprise was it when you saw him step out of that Ranger over and walk up Downing Street on Monday

morning? Well, it was complete surprise. I was actually on Times radio. They do a nine o'clock

slot where you talk about the big stories in the news. And we were talking obviously, Suella Braveman had just resigned. And then I saw Beth Rigby from Sky tweeting,

you know, David Cameron's just walked up the road in Downing Street. And I thought it was a kind

of trolling, you know, comedy tweet about, you know, let's have a fantasy reshuffle to start

with before we start on the real reshuffle. And then it became clear that David Cameron had walked up the road in Downing Street.

And then stupidly, I sort of completely missed the point.

I said, you know, it could be a coincidence.

It could be coming in.

...