Friday 29 June 2007

Brown's first day and security scare

Two days into the new Brown administration, and we have a Cabinet of fresh, and some not so fresh, faces. I’m particularly pleased at the promotion of David Milliband and Hilary Benn to important and influential roles, namely Foreign and Environment Secretary respectively. There seems to be a clear break with the past, but retaining the best bits of Blairism. For example, one of the so-called ‘Primrose Hill set’, James Purnell, has made Culture Secretary. He’s young, sharp, and very clever. And there’s been a few interesting departmental renamings and general shifting about. Education and Skills gets chopped in half with the schools bit and the universities bit split from each other.

Jacqui Smith seems to have her work cut out though – a potentially catastrophic terrorist scare this morning in Haymarket, central London saw her chair her first meeting of the crisis committee Cobra after less than a day in the job. Talk about in at the deep end. As I write this much of the West End is cordoned off – we don’t really know what’s going to happen.

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