Reshuffle chaos
Well I was going to write an anaylsis of Blair’s “radical” resuffle but Nosemonkey has done such a good job that I thought i’d link to him.
The only additions i’d like to make is that i’m not surprised that he chose Margaret Beckett as Foreign secretary - Blair always likes to break records to give a positive spin on his reshuffles and to beat Maggie Thatcher whenever he can - remember Blair has broken all records by having the most women in cabinet, the first black man (Paul Boateng), the first black women in Cabinet - well now he’s got the first women Foreign secretary. The only surprise is that Jack Straw was demoted - was it over Iran perhaps?
May 7th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
[...] Any doubt that the UK’s foreign policy was decided by the US has finally been squashed - it seems that America now has the power to demote British ministers. This story in the Sunday Indepedent argues that Jack Straw was demoted because of a phone call from President Bush last month over Jack’s stand on Iran. I hinted on Friday that Iran was one of the reasons for Jack’s demotion. As we’ve seen several times over the last few months, Jack’s views differ from that of the Prime Minister’s view (as dictated by President Bush). Whereas Blair has said that no option has been removed from the table, Straw has said that an attack on Iran would be foolish. [...]