And how many hospitals we get?

A bill.

Oh, how many more police officers are we recruiting?

That's right.

How many nurses?

More necessary.

Recruiting more buses?

What more could a prime minister, four fires and beautiful British built low carbon three, shake up of Cabinet and replacing the chancellor is about number 10 Centralizing power?

Good morning on the new secretaries of state today had gushing words not just for the PM but his chief special advisor to I've known and worked with Dominic Cummings for many years on a number of projects.

He's a very brilliant man.

He's absolutely passionate about supporting the prime minister's vision and agenda.

And I think there's a really great team at number 10 to drive that foot.

You Running number 11 is well, his number 10.

Dominic Cummings himself had few words to share this morning.

Polite greeting.

Onda laughed when asked if he was the Thomas Cromwell of politics.

But in his speech some six years ago, he outlined his vision for government so that would be on my to do list if I haven't managed to successfully get controlled.

Number 10.

Treat the Cabinets.

The idea of a cabin that over 30 people is complete force break the power of the Treasury to be.

Is that power now broken?

The man in charge of the nation's finances until yesterday wasn't a town pension is there today?

Sergeant Javal quit, unwilling to accept Number ten's demands that he replaced all his advisers.

But other ministers signed up to Downing Street's conditions.

The justice secretary, Robert Buckland, agreed to fire his adviser.

Here's how it happened.

He came back to the office.

I give a big hug and said, Well done, great stuff.

You're a great guy He said, Thank you very much.

He talked me through his conversation for us a little bit.

A man said, I'm sorry.

I have some bad news for you.

Is this the behavior of a strong government or a weak government that's insecure?

I think it's an incredibly strong government.

Dominic coming still in a meeting with that.

I was attending a bite six months ago and said We're going to get Brexit done.

We're going to have an election we're going to win a big majority.

I still have the back with my arms, hold them and thought no chance met.

We did all three.

He was absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong.

One.

Even those who were sacked stay on message.

You know there's a new discipline in town, but how long will it sustain so back to our main news?

The reshuffle on the parent power grab by number 10.

I'm joined now by three people who have worked for Prime Minister's on Chancellor's Here with me in the studio.

Stuart would, who advised Gordon Brown while he was at the Treasury on when he was prime minister.

James Johnson was a special adviser to Theresa May on from Norwich, the former civil servant Caroline slow cop who was private secretary to Margaret Thatcher before working in the Treasury.

And I wonder Caroline's slow cop when you see rows about special advisers and Chancellor's walking out where the memories come back.

Definitely.

It really reminds me of that day when Nigel Lawson quite unexpectedly came over to number 10 on, Dhe said.

Either he goes or I go and he was talking about Alan Walters, a special adviser to, uh Margaret Thatcher.

And she was, I think, shocked that he thought that it was worth resigning over a mere advise that she's famously said Ministers decide Advisor's advice But she stood by on Walter's on Dhe.

Nigel Lawson left on dhe.

She appeared rather like the current prime minister, to have won the battle.

But if you look over the the next year, she actually lost the war.

She put in a former chief secretary that the very young John Major to become chancellor and hoped that he would be mandible and she could get her way.

But in fact, he managed to persuade her that she should join the E.

R.

N at the very point on which Nigel Lawson was trying thio get her to agree with him on Dhe.

So the young, malleable chancellor became the prime minister.

Yes.

A year later, she was actually, you know, she effectively was knifed in the back by Jeffrey Hauer, former chancellor, in a speech in the House of Commons, which led to her eventually resigning on at her side was Nigel Lawson.

It took a year, but he ultimately got his revenge.

So you know I think that the current prime minister should think carefully.

He might have looked rather cheerful today when he was getting his ministers to almost sing along with him in cabinet.

Repeating after him.

Kee pledges.

But it's not a good look for a prime minister to be bullying their ministers and looking like that he's pulling the strings of sort of mere puppet figures on the Treasury.

Is a very strong department of the Treasury ultimately got its way wrongly.

Actually, because we crashed out of the R in spring, it's too.

Would I mean, are we still in an era in which Advisor's advisor ministers decide, or dude advisers decided ministers do what they're told?

Well, there's always advisers like Alistair Campbell in the Labor years and maybe Dominic Cummings now that have power beyond purely being.

People whisper in the year of their boss.

I think the really interesting about what's happened in the last 24 hours is not so much Richie Richie seen it coming in in place of the chance to said you'd have it.

But the way that special advisers are now instructed to report to Dominic Cummings and number 10 because it transformed.

It might seem a small thing, but it transforms the dynamic of the relationship between the advisors and the minister's inside their own department.

If a Treasury special adviser is now taking instructions from number 10 about what the Treasury can and cannot do, that totally transformed the Treasury standing and the minister standing inside the dog.

But a lot of people go.

Who cares?

This is about, you know, the interpersonal politics of a few people I don't care about.

The question is, how does it change?

The delivery of governments doesn't make it better or worse.

I think I think feeling from a conservative government as well as national interest one.

Do you?

It makes it far worse.

It won't matter in the next week or two or three weeks or four weeks.

It matters when things start to go wrong.

When things start to go wrong.

The blame fingers They're all pointed at number 10 because they have now taken the hire and fire power over the key political appointments in the department's departments.

Brief against number 10 they wash their hands so it makes a massive difference when things start to go wrong.

That's when you'll see it.

But James Johnson I mean, you know, if Don Nick Cummings wants control when he clearly does, doesn't this mean he can now do what he wants to do?

And yes, it means you can't blame anybody else, but at least you know he gets to change the world, you know, with all the country.

At least I think that certainly puts number 10 in a very strong position.

Some people have said, Well, actually, look, you know, you've had joint teams working between number 10 number 11 before under Blair and Brown under Captain Osborne.

The difference there is that Gordon Brown was a very strong political figure, as was George Osborne.

They were able to provide that pushed back to number 10 thing.

There was one point of caution in this, though.

Yes, we've seen a very powerful number 10 out of this.

We have to remember that Dominic Cummings also didn't win every battle this year in January over ages to go our way.

But what we certainly are seeing here is the institution of the Prime Minister Number 10 really sort of having a big impact on those other cabinet posts.

It doesn't really matter.

In a sense, you know what some of the who some of these ministers are in.

Some of these posts were in a world now where Number 10 is calling the shots, and that has big ramifications.

Caroline's local I mean, how easy is it really to control the Treasury, which is a vast institution, you know?

Is it as much of a pushover as the current occupants of number 10 might think.

It's a very powerful department, and it's full of often quite brilliant people on Dhe.

It has a tremendous grip on the detail of government in the way that Number 10 never can.

So I think it's it's it's not gonna be a pushover.

I think we need to look into the long game.

I think it may well be that the Treasury has its way on this, even though I think it sometimes does take the wrong decisions.

It can't be far too short term, but I think the other point is about the importance of good Cabinet government.

If you're going to deliver things, not just campaign is Dominic Cummings, and the government is successfully done but actually deliver ah lot of detailed policies on the ground and it's a lot of detail to do for this government.

Then you have to have strong ministers.

It's it's not just a political game.

Delivery involves real people out there trying to get a lots and lots of things done and you need strong ministers, so this is undermining of that process.

I think it's Bean a lot of centralization since my time in number 10 in in in in number 10 and also the Treasury and it's it's it's not the way to go.

We actually need more delegation on more effective government across a range of departments, So I think it is.

Bullying your ministers is a bad tactic and it may look strong in the short run.

But look back to Margaret Thatcher and see what happened to her.

It doesn't necessarily pay off.

In the end, it would.

I mean, it kind of takes you back to sort of yes, Minister doesn't know.

Caroline's local says you need strong ministers when you look at that old speech of Dominic Cummings, which is on the Internet from 2014 that his vision weakening the treasury sacking to know civil servants when it when you want to.

It's as though, you know, he thinks.

Actually, you don't need strong ministers.

You need strong advisors and strong officials and they're the people will really run the show.

Yeah, I think I think that that's the fascinating thing about this government is taken The Cult of the advisor, which was already quite strong in the labor years to new heights.

The idea that a strong network of advisors can effectively run the government.

How did the workers you've been an advice.

I mean, it's tempting to think of the advisers, the person who tells the minister what to say and what to think.

Well, the minister's just the frontman.

I think there's any truth to that.

Advisers in department's job is to help ministers make the right judgments and be a kind of connecting tissue between the officials and the minister.

In Number 10 it's a completely different kettle of fish.

Advisors in Number 10 have huge power.

They speak on behalf of their boss two departments.

You can't get access to their to the prime minister, the key decisions.

So the number 10 advisors can indeed steer policy.

In my day.

I mean people Andrew Donuts do then was education advisor to Tony Blair in the late nineties.

He was probably as powerful, if not more, than education secretary.

So that's not that new.

I guess it all depends James Johnson, on whether they deliver as to how the public judge this certainly and way.

Maybe in a situation where you know this does lead to a lot of delivery, it may be that it causes problems.

I think the other thing to really think about it.

This is the Sonny's of number 10 because he knew it might be a completely different story if Number 10 had lots and lots of people had really strong center organization was able to might manage all of these things, but actually it's quite smaller.

I think there are only about 100 fifty's and a full time staff there.

It's not a sort of massive organization, and certainly when I was there, you know people are stretched know everybody is aware it's literally a house, right, so there are teams buried away and borrowed away a little different rooms.

They're not always talking to each other.

It's quite difficult for an organization of that side to manage the whole of government.

And how easy is it for orders issued by Downing Street to get garbled and changed along the way as they go through thousands of civil servant is What's gonna happen now with the treasure will go into a huge institutional sulk.

At this Andi, things will go to the Treasury and nothing will come back.

The Treasury has information on the prime minister is in danger now of with these changes of being in a position of making announcements and having no idea whether there's a cost overrun or what they'll cost down the line, because the Treasury will not want to share information.

If everything is going straight back to number 10 straight away, that's a real problem for any prime minister.