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British Prime Minister Blair Appoints Diverse Cabinet to Lead New Government

LONDON, May 3 -- Britain's new prime minister, Tony Blair, completed most of his cabinet appointments today, and while there were no surprises, there were many firsts: He appointed a record five women, a blind man, an openly gay man and a foreign secretary who writes racing columns on the side.

Analysts consider it a strong and knowledgeable cabinet, almost all its members having served in Labor's shadow government in the House of Commons, and all having known each other for years.

However, those strengths are also the cabinet's greatest potential weakness. Its members bring numerous long-standing rivalries -- political, ideological and personal -- which is perhaps inescapable in a system where almost everyone in power is drawn from the same pool, the House of Commons. There are no governors in Britain to install in the 22-member cabinet, or mayors, or district attorneys, and all cabinet members must be members of Parliament.

The chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, is a power center unto himself. He has his own loyal party following and was a Blair rival for the party leadership. It seems that Brown, who has always pined to live at No. 10 Downing Street, will get to do so. The Blairs have decided that the small apartment that is the traditional home of the prime minister is not large enough for their family of five. They are looking at No. 11 next door, traditionally the chancellor's residence.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair outside No. 10 Downing St. with wife Cherie and children. (AFP)

The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, a former ship's cook, openly has displayed his working-class disdain for the new social security secretary, Harriet Harman, in part because she sent her child to a fancy private school and because Blair declined to discipline Harman for that betrayal of the party's education gospel.

The foreign secretary, Robin Cook, is a left-leaning "Euroskeptic," relatively unfriendly to some of the more far-reaching proposals for European integration, while Brown is a "Europhile" who, until agreeing to toe the party line, favored early British entry into the program for a single European currency.

Home Secretary Jack Straw, responsible for criminal justice, is a hard-liner on law and order, famous for advocating curfews for adolescents and "community safety orders" to silence noisy neighbors and for a vow to "reclaim the streets from the aggressive begging of winos, addicts and squeegee merchants."

On the other hand, the man in charge of legal affairs, the new lord chancellor, Alexander Irvine, is a prominent civil libertarian.

Blair won a very big victory in Thursday's election, but Westminster, the seat of government in London, is a very small town.

"The scale of the landslide is such that it will pull them all together," said Andy McSmith, author and chronicler of the modern Labor Party. "It'll be a while before any serious trouble breaks out. But sooner or later there are bound to be confrontations in the cabinet, mostly over economic policy and the single currency and Brown's determination to be `iron chancellor.' There are also some pretty profound temperamental differences: the one between Prescott and Harman, and neither Prescott nor Cook can get on with Brown."

Among those attempting to ride herd on the Blair administration, as well as on Britain's unruly press corps, will be his trusted campaign aides: Peter Mandelson, also a member of Parliament, and Alistair Campbell, the grim-faced press secretary who is with Blair everywhere he goes, the one who takes reporters aside and advises them what the "message" is every day.

If there will be stress in the Blair government, it probably will be between the cabinet members and this inner circle, which made no friends during the campaign telling Labor's shadow cabinet what was or was not "on message."

Brown has a well-known distrust of Mandelson -- whom the press here portrays as a Svengali -- stemming in part from his view that Mandelson betrayed him by supporting Blair instead of Brown as party leader in 1994.

Clare Short, the secretary for international development, made much news last August when, after being demoted within the shadow cabinet, she described the inner circle as "the people who live in the dark. Everything they do is in hiding. . . . Everything we do is in the light. They live in the dark. It's a good place for them, I think."

Short did not name names, but she did not have to. "I think the obsession with the media and focus groups is making us look as if we want power at any price and that we don't stand for anything," she said in an interview with the New Statesman magazine. Her words later became the basis for a Conservative Party poster demonizing Blair.

Other appointees include David Blunkett, who is blind, as education and employment secretary; Marjorie "Mo" Mowlam as Northern Ireland secretary; Chris Smith, who is openly gay, as national heritage secretary; and George Robertson as defense secretary. Margaret Beckett is the new trade and industry secretary, and Ann Taylor is leader of the House of Commons.

Blair includes among his entourage a spiritual adviser, an Oxford University friend and theologian, the Rev. Peter Thomson. Although Australian, Thomson has moved to London to be with Blair and is now the object of great press attention, which he does not reject.

"Friendship is the highest form of human existence and is so important in the fare of human existence that it requires no justification beyond itself," he was quoted as saying in this morning's London Times.

"Something happened yesterday," he said of Blair's landslide victory. "People said we need a fresh start. . . . They said, `Let's work together for the common good, to build a more civilized society.' These are spiritual concepts. Listening to Blair talk after his victory -- that was a spiritual message."

[President Clinton called Blair's election "a big vote for change" and held out hope today that it would jump-start the peace process in Northern Ireland, the Associated Press reported. "I hope and pray, now that the British election is over, that Prime Minister Blair will take up the torch, that the IRA will declare a cease-fire, and that we can get back on the road to resolving that problem. It is high time," Clinton told reporters in Washington.]