I’ve seen so much baseless reshuffle speculation in the papers over the last few days that I thought I would add to it. Much of it is based on nothing more than sniffing the political wind, but some people are better sniffers than others. If I get half of these right, I will be pleased!

  1. Grant Shapps ain’t going nowhere
  2. Mike Penning will be promoted either to the Cabinet, or a frontline position like immigration minister
  3. My outside tip is for William Hague to leave the cabinet allowing one of the three top positions to become free
  4. Mark Harper to return in a Minister of State role
  5. Esther McVey, Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry to join the Cabinet
  6. Ken Clarke, Sir George Young and Andrew Lansley to leave the Cabinet
  7. Penny Mordaunt to join the Ministry of Defence
  8. Priti Patel to enter government
  9. Kwasi Kwarteng and Jesse Norman to join the whips office
  10. Cameron to fire one or all of his original leadership supporters, Greg Barker, Andrew Robothan and Hugo Swire
  11. Eric Pickles will stay where he is – to do anything else would signal madness has set in
  12. Iain Duncan Smith will refuse to move from the DWP. Again.
  13. Gavin Barwell to move from the whips office, maybe to the DCLG to take on Minister for London role
  14. Michael Fallon to join the cabinet or kept in post but given the right to attend cabinet
  15. Therese Coffey to join the whips office
  16. Watch out for a couple of rebels to be given jobs – Tracey Crouch and Stewart Jackson spring to mind
  17. Watch out for one or two former ministers to be recycled, just to give the others hope
  18. Theresa Villiers for EU Commissioner. Possibly. Or maybe not. This has been one of Number 10’s better kept secrets. Truth is, no one knows
  19. Liz Truss to replace David Willetts as Minister of State for Universities with the right to attend Cabinet
  20. Alan Duncan will fall on his sword