British Prime Minister Tony Blair overhauled his government today after one of the worst local election defeats of his premiership in a bid to reassert his authority and signal he has no plans to step down as yet.
The shakeup follows accusations of government sleaze and incompetence on top of the dismal results, which piled pressure on Blair to give his government new impetus or step aside.
Mr Blair axed foreign minister Jack Straw and interior minister Charles Clarke.
He also stripped his deputy John Prescott of his ministry after a sex scandal and installed a fresh team to push forward reforms of services such as health and education.
Environment minister Margaret Beckett, who earned an international profile in climate change talks, replaced Straw to become Britain's first female foreign minister.
John Reid, a loyal Blair backer, switched from defence to the home affairs ministry -
a department in crisis after a string of mishaps, including the release of foreign prisoners who should have been considered for deportation.
Blair replaced Reid with Des Browne, who was No. 2 at the Treasury under the finance minister. He takes on a high-profile role with British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Tony Blair hopes to go on for another two years and with this reshuffle I think he's signalled his intention to go on," said Peter Kellner, a pollster at independent polling organisation YouGov.
The Prime Minister also kept the peace with finance minister Gordon Brown, his expected successor, by promoting some of his allies.
Mr Brown is tipped to replace Tony 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.
Mr Blair's ruling Labour Party lost 298 council seats in
yesterday's elections of English local authorities while the Conservatives had won 281 with almost all the results counted.
Labour was defending 1,768 seats out of 4,360 up for grabs. Analysts had said losing many more than 200 seats would be a bad result for Blair.
The reshuffle came after Brown had said the election results were a "warning shot" for the government and called for an immediate renewal of the Labour Party.
"We have got to show in the next few days, not just the next few weeks, that we have sorted these problems out," Mr Brown told BBC radio this morning. "I will be talking to Tony Blair about these issues over the weekend."
New opposition Conservative leader David Cameron had little time to savour his local election success before Mr Blair's cabinet makeover stole the headlines.
"I don't think this reshuffle will be enough. What we need in this country is not a reshuffle of the government. We need a replacement for the government," said Mr Cameron.
Voters in Britain generally use mid-term local elections to kick the government of the day but Labour suffered worse than expected losses, particularly in the capital London.
But the Conservatives failed to make inroads in northern cities such as Manchester or Liverpool where gaining a toehold is seen as crucial to winning any national poll.
