MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Blair's sweeping reshuffle keeps Brown waiting

Prime Minister Tony Blair fired his Home secretary and removed the Foreign secretary in a wide-ranging Cabinet reshuffle, an immediate reaction to Labor's pounding in Thursday's local elections but which also gives an indication as to the future leadership of the party.

Blair removed Jack Straw as foreign secretary, replacing him with Margaret Beckett, who had headed the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She becomes the first woman to hold the job.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who admitted an affair with a secretary, will keep his title but was stripped of the responsibilities of his department, which include housing and planning.

Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke said he had turned down offers of other government posts. "I do not think it would be appropriate to remain in this government in these circumstances" Clarke said in a statement.

The government?s acknowledgment last week that officials had failed to screen 1,023 foreign criminals for deportation before freeing them from prison in the past seven years was particularly damaging to Blair.

Besides diverting attention away from the election results, Blair's promotion of key allies of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown should keep his expected successor happy for now, analysts said. But by switching two-thirds of cabinet posts, Blair sought to stamp his authority on government and install a fresh team to push forward reforms of key services like health and education.

Brown is tipped to replace Blair before the next general election, due by mid-2010, but the prime minister has yet to give a handover date and relations between them have been tense.

The new defence minister, Des Browne, is a key ally of the finance minister and takes on a high-profile role with British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But John Reid, a loyal Blair backer, switched from defence to the home affairs ministry.

Differences between Straw and Blair regarding key foreign policy issues such as Iraq and Iran were not unknown to the press and political circles. Some reports said the outgoing foreign secretary had privately expressed doubts about the Iraq war, and publicly took a different approach on Iran than Blair did. Straw frequently described military action against Tehran as "inconceivable" and the reported U.S. contingency plans for a tactical nuclear strike as "completely nuts."

Blair's official spokesman declined to say why Straw had been demoted.

"Blair is reluctant to rule out (military action) in public whereas Straw has done it on more than one occasion," said John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University. "Straw is clearly not minded to repeat the Iraqi experience."

"I think what we have seen over the last few hours is that while the Labour Party is collapsing, the Conservative Party is building," Cameron said as he toured London to celebrate his party?s gains in the local elections.

Thursday?s vote was widely seen as a referendum on Blair?s government, and Cameron emerged as the main winner.

Labour took 1,065 seats in incomplete counting, down 251 seats compared with the results of the last election. The Conservatives won 1,567 seats, a gain of 249. Labour lost control of 16 local councils ? including some boroughs in London ? and the Tories gained eight.

Labour also did badly in the 2004 local vote but that didn?t stop Blair from leading the party to its third straight national election victory a year later, albeit with a reduced majority in the House of Commons.

Gordon Brown said voters were concerned about issues of crime, terrorism and their financial and job security. "We?ve got to show in the next few days, not just in the next few weeks, that we are sorting these problems out," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Voters Thursday chose representatives to fill 4,360 seats in 176 local authorities across England, a little less than half of all English councils. London was the biggest battleground, with elections in all 32 boroughs.

Voters in Britain traditionally use local elections to punish the government of the day.

"The Conservatives have had their best result since 1992 and it shows they are on the way back," said Mori pollster Ben Page, "but it doesn't mean that Labour are going to lose the next election. It just shows it will be close. This is far from a meltdown".

Most Labour members of Parliament "are saying now that we?ve got to get the party under new management. It ought to happen fairly soon," said Frank Dobson, who was health secretary in Blair?s first Cabinet.